Talk:Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (2020)

December 31, 2019
Was the CDC notified by China or their WHO? How became the CDC informed on that day?

New large discrepancy in COVID-19 deaths
As of last night (midnight April 18), there is suddenly a large discrepancy (around 4,700) between the deaths reported on this page and those reported by Johns Hopkins. Specifically, the cumulative total for April 18 is given here as 34,178; Johns Hopkins was reporting around 38,890 late last night and over 39K on the morning of April 19. Because the jump at JH was quite large compared to previous days, my layman's hypothesis is that there was an update (e.g., from New York) that retroactively added a lot of deaths that previously hadn't been assigned to COVID-19 and that these should probably be distributed over earlier dates. I'm a user of this page, not an editor, but I hope that someone with the relevant resources can resolve the discrepancy.

Suggest migrating state-specific details?
I've seen a few suggestions to this effect, so I suspect this wouldn't be a problem, but I didn't want to make such a broad change to the article without first opening it up to discussion.

As others have noted, this article is a bit bogged down or lop-sided with very frequent updates on a handful of states (with comparatively no day-to-day developments for most other states). As this article concerns the timeline for the United States as a whole, I'm of a mind to migrate state-specific developments over to their respective state-based articles (where/if this information isn't already included). Thus, this article would only include nationwide developments or decisions/announcements made at a federal level.

Like I said, I don't want to pull the trigger if there are any objections or major concerns. Billygoehring (talk) 01:12, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, could we leave Michigan's blow-by-blow account to its dedicated page? How about we get rid of standalone, state-specific death tolls and case counts? dbabbitt (talk) 14:12, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

I went ahead and started trimming. Near the end, especially, it starts to lean into Ohio-based reporting--updates on campground policies, etc. If anyone objects, my suggestion is that such information is more appropriate for a state-based article than a national one. There's still a lot to go through and clean up re: formatting; I only scratched the surface.

My two cents is that state-specific info is relevant when it's of national importance--first announcement, major announcements, developments in the relationship between state and federal responses. Deaths and cases are already tracked up top, so further state-level updates aren't needed in the timeline itself. Not that it wouldn't be relevant for a different article, of course! Billygoehring (talk) 08:02, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

The change from "tickertape" to "prose" style resulted in lost data, dates, citations & readability.
I see a revision that removed over 256k characters, and see that much data is missing. For instance, the many bulleted events and counts under a certain date are now mostly gone, but also when present, are buried in a paragraph, prose-style, to no benefit for the reader.

This change should be rolled back and a discussion started about why we would want to hide and remove so much information. I originally came to this timeline to see case counts by date, and specifically, see when each new million cases was reached to be able to quickly see how the new cases are accelerating. This prose format makes this difficult or impossible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GtoTheCizzay (talk • contribs) 14:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Rolled back changes to the original format, losing some curated changes in the process. Please use this talk page to suggest changes to the article before removing hundreds of thousands of characters and over 400 citations. GtoTheCizzay (talk) 14:58, 10 December 2020 (UTC)


 * The clearest and quickest way to "to see case counts by date," or "when each new million cases was reached" can be found at Statistics of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. IMO, without a summary style readable format, this entire article is actually less than useless, despite it's countless citations. See another explantion or this one, which adds: Excessive listings of unexplained statistics. Statistics that lack context or explanation can reduce readability and may be confusing; accordingly, statistics should be placed in tables to enhance readability, and articles with statistics should include explanatory text providing context.  --Light show (talk) 20:20, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your response. I won't argue for or against the other data in the article -- though it may indeed be unnecessary to have each milestone that is present -- my personal interest in this article is the dates of cumulative case counts, which is not present in your statistics article you linked. I would note the following: 1) your edit was very large, and changed the flow and detail of the article, 2) you didn't first attempt to discuss this change as is generally done before big changes like this. When you remove around 400 pieces of data/information/sources without discussion, you deprive the readers of the opportunity to find this wealth of information, and the community of wiki-editors from reaching an informed consensus on how to move the growing document forward. Should this article change? Maybe. Should it change overnight without discussion? I doubt it. To the point, other than the million case milestones, what else that you edited away did you feel was superfluous, wordy, or otherwise in the way of this article fulfilling the purpose of a timeline of events of the US COVID-19 pandemic? GtoTheCizzay (talk) 21:59, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Just going back to July, all of the subsequent death factoids should be graphed. The daily death counts and totals aren't of use in the daily list format. --Light show (talk) 22:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I honestly don't care either way what the article looks like. Love of Corey (talk) 00:04, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * So what're we going to do moving forward? Is prose the way to go? Or tickertape? Love of Corey (talk) 22:18, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I similarly don't mind about the look as much as losing hundreds of facts/data. I think, looking at our three profiles, that we might want to invite more discussion from some more senior editors before making the change(s). Your two profiles seem riddled with complaints (and some ban messages), and I have less than twenty edits in two years. I agree with the idea of the million deaths in a table, and possibly other facts could be condensed that way resulting in increased readability. I don't use the article for all the other stuff here, but I would not be at all surprised if other readers do. I am a casual editor, and have never requested a ruling or other form of "dispute resolution," and don't know where to begin. GtoTheCizzay (talk) 13:26, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Remember: A cited source publication date is not necessarily the date that cited event OCCURED
For example, I see an edit to December 7 (US hits 15M cases) > December 8 with a new citation to a USA today article dated December 8, but it was published at 4am, and was written on December 7. Original citation for December 7 included confirmed case count on December 7.GtoTheCizzay (talk) 15:01, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

First U.S. Death
The article claims that someone in California died Feb 6. The animated map still has the story that someone in Washington first bit the dust near the end of Feb. Both of those are false according to NCHS statistics released by CDC here: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-and-Select-Causes/muzy-jte6 It shows someone dying (in Illinois) in the week from 29 Dec 2019 to 04 Jan 2020. Then 3 more died in the week from 12 Jan to 18 Jan (one each from California, Illinois, and Tennessee; for the one in California it was not thought to be an "Underlying Cause of Death"). The next week, 19 Jan to 25 Jan, there were 2 (one each in Virginia and Wisconsin). The next week, 26 Jan to 1 Feb, no deaths are recorded. The next week, 2 Feb to 8 Feb, there's just the one in California - apparently the one that made the news months after the fact, and it's not recorded to be an "Underlying Cause of Death". Let's get real folks and exercise a little bit of epistemological humility. The fact is we have NO CLUE who was actually the first person in the U.S. either to die with or from COVID-19. Whoever it was probably didn't even know, and it was probably in December. It might boost our little egos to be able to spout little factoids about who died first, but anyone with an ounce of reflection and study knows we don't know. You can't even say the Feb 6 death was the "first recorded"; it's only the first recorded that has been widely publicized in news media. The others probably never will be named for privacy reasons, or simply because IT DOESN'T MATTER. Knowing from the recorded stats that the disease was definitely here in December (which common sense would tell you anyway) is the main takeaway. 172.75.72.202 (talk) 01:59, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

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