Local Focus vs. The Big Board

During this COVID-19 crisis, I’ve found that a person gets much more meaningful information through localized sources. The national TV news has their “big board” approach showing countries, then state counts of cases and deaths related to coronavirus.  But I was left wondering what about right here?!?

Naturally a fan of research, I skulked around the Web and found local sources that provide meaningful data.  Now I track that local data which gets right to the heart of what’s happening in my neighborhood.

The trick is “county-based” information.  Around Seattle, for example, you go here to see trends: www.kingcounty.gov/covid.  It’s far handier than seeing the stats on a national news channel as the local figures, along with guidelines and timelines related to them, are all available in one place. The daily counts on pages like this also enable one to create their own tracker of the situation.  By jotting down the day’s new numbers and figuring out the percentage change compared to yesterday, I can determine how much cases are actually growing or slowing in my neck of the woods.

So, as many of us are trying to avoid the “big board” on national news along with all of the stressful, heated discussions around it all, we still want to know what’s happening.  We want to be tuned into trends so that we can someday have a ray of hope.

Going local is the way to do this.  Look up your county’s page on the subject…chances are you’ll find the information you need the most there. Thank you county government Web techs for creating and maintaining those pages for us!

Please share your own tips with us on our LinkedIn page about getting the best information out there on this crisis.

– Mark Salow, Sr. Consultant