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Fair Warning - Birbs, fishing, and disinfectant poisonings

Happy Sunday! I have had a strange week - in a good way? My last week at work, which is always strang
Fair Warning
Fair Warning - Birbs, fishing, and disinfectant poisonings
By Sophie Warnes • Issue #113 • View online
Happy Sunday! I have had a strange week - in a good way? My last week at work, which is always strange and bittersweet, made all the moreso because I couldn’t hug anyone goodbye. I’m hoping I’ll be able to see some of my former colleagues when lockdown ends. In the meantime I can comfort myself with knowing that if they ever miss me on Slack they can call the Sophbot which returns a random comment that I’ve made. [I am entirely serious; my boss made a Slackbot to pull out my old comments…]
This week is a free week for me - I am having a break between jobs, although I am talking to students at City University tomorrow afternoon and my plan is to sort out as much of my crap as possible to make the move to the US a bit smoother when the time comes. We’ll see how well that goes…
Fun non-data stuff:

On the home front
Brexit trade deal: Who really owns UK fishing quotas?
Over half of the UK’s fishing quotas were sold in the 90s to foreign companies, and the government won’t/can’t demand them back, so nothing will change after Brexit. This must be annoying for the fishermen that voted for it. Included for the data on foreign ownership of quotas, etc.
www.bbc.co.uk  •  Share
This was my favourite last project at ONS and I’m pretty pleased it was published this week, since it was my idea to do something based on the NYT article about workers at risk. Obviously health workers work very closely with people and also are exposed to disease, so they come out top, but so do primary school teachers…
www.ons.gov.uk  •  Share
Another piece of work I was involved in. This looks at the key workers in the UK and which industries they work in. Perhaps most surprisingly, a third of all workers in the UK are in what you could call key worker occupations.
www.ons.gov.uk  •  Share
Over the pond
The Richest Neighborhoods Emptied Out Most as Coronavirus Hit New York City
Very interesting: “The city’s population decreased by 4 percent to 5 percent, and the residents who left were overwhelmingly from the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, chiefly in Manhattan.” You can see how many residents left, neighbourhood by neighbourhood.
Related: Garbage in affluent NYC neighbourhoods has gone down.
www.nytimes.com  •  Share
“For social distancing policies that lasted at least 16 to 20 days, the daily rate of infection dropped by more than 9 percentage points” nuff said.
www.washingtonpost.com  •  Share
Accidental Poisonings Increased After President Trump's Disinfectant Comments
Accidental Poisonings Increased After President Trump's Disinfectant Comments
Poisonings from disinfectant were up by 121% in April compared to the same time last year, following Trump’s musings about injecting disinfectants.
I feel like I need a bigger hand to do this face palm justice.
time.com  •  Share
Elsewhere
Suicides in Japan have fallen by 20% compared to last year. This is the biggest drop in five years, and is partly attributed to lifestyle changes forced by the virus: People are spending more time at home with their families, and not commuting to offices, thus feeling less stressed. It’s particularly interesting because people were concerned about lockdowns *increasing* suicide rates.
www.theguardian.com  •  Share
Odds and ends
This Is 40,000 Years of London’s History—Made Entirely of Paper
No data as such but THIS IS JUST SO CUTE and beautiful! The process of constructing Crossrail has unearthed thousands of artifacts and told us so much more about the history of London. Here it is, made of paper.
video.nationalgeographic.com  •  Share
This is a really neat way to learn about birds and the calls they make in your area. I wasn’t sure if it would work for the UK but it does! Yay! Birbs!
birbs.glitch.me  •  Share
See how experts use disease modeling to predict coronavirus cases after states reopen
See how experts use disease modeling to predict coronavirus cases after states reopen
I read “IMAGINE YOU ARE AN EPIDEMIOLOGIST” and realised that the last two months of being sat in my flat reading about the virus has prepared me for this very moment. Now is my time to shine.
(In all seriousness this is a great walk-through of how people have been modelling the virus and how they make decisions from models)
www.washingtonpost.com  •  Share
The Economist has opened up its dataset on excess mortality around the world, and it’s now on GitHub. James Tozer wrote about it on Twitter.
“Speculative redesign of the infographics used by NY Governor Cuomo in his public briefings on the coronavirus crisis.”
I quite like them.
www.pentagram.com  •  Share
Great simulation that explains how to understand the accuracy of antibody tests. It discusses sensitivity and specificity and how those two being different values can change how accurate tests are. Very cool.
qz.com  •  Share
That’s all I have for now! If you enjoyed reading Fair Warning today, you can buy me a coffee, or you can become a Patron (I don’t put any extra content on there; it’s just a good way for people to regularly contribute if they want). Otherwise, please forward to others and encourage them to sign up. :) See you next week!
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Sophie Warnes

A weekly newsletter with anywhere between 10 and 20 links about data journalism, data visualisation, and storytelling, curated by a British data journalist and nerd. Expect politics, statistics, society and culture - all through the frame of data... With a dash of whimsy.

Read more about the author at www.sophiewarnes.com.

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