In March 2020, health care technologist Amy Gleason had a daunting task ahead of her. She was a new member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s data team, and it was her job to figure out where people were testing positive for COVID-19 across the country, how many were in hospitals, and how many had died from the disease.

Gleason was shocked to find that data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wasn’t reflecting the immediate impact of the coronavirus. At the same time, the country was suffering from another huge shortfall: a lack of COVID-19 tests. The task force also faced national shortages of medical supplies like masks and ventilators and lacked basic information about COVID-19 hospitalizations that would help them know where to send supplies.

Realizing that the federal government was failing to collect national data, reporters at The Atlantic formed The COVID Tracking Project. Across all 50 states, hundreds of volunteers began gathering crucial information on the number of cases, deaths, and hospitalizations. Each day, they compiled the state COVID-19 data in a massive spreadsheet, creating the nation’s most reliable picture of the spread of the deadly disease.

This week on Reveal: The second episode of our three-part series asks why there was no good federal data about COVID-19. This Peabody Award-nominated series is hosted by epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera and reported by Artis Curiskis and Kara Oehler from The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in April 2023.

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The United States has 4% of the world’s population but more than 16% of COVID-19 deaths.

Back in February 2020, reporters Rob Meyer and Alexis Madrigal from The Atlantic were trying to find solid data about the rising pandemic. They published a story that revealed a scary truth: The U.S. didn’t know where COVID-19 was spreading because few tests were available. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also didn’t have public data to tell citizens or federal agencies how many people were infected or where the outbreaks were happening.

Their reporting led to a massive volunteer effort by hundreds of people across the country who gathered the data themselves. The COVID Tracking Project became a de facto source of data amid the chaos of COVID-19. With case counts rising quickly, volunteers scrambled to document tests, hospitalizations, and deaths in an effort to show where the virus was and who was dying.

This week on Reveal: We investigate the failures by federal agencies that led to over 1 million Americans dying from COVID-19 and what that tells us about the nation’s ability to fight the next pandemic.This Peabody Award-nominated three-part series is hosted by epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera and reported by Artis Curiskis and Kara Oehler from The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in April 2023.

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Adam Aurand spent nearly a decade of his life stuck in a loop: emergency rooms, psychiatric hospitals, jails, prison, and the streets in and around Seattle.

During that time, he picked up diagnoses of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and schizoaffective disorder. He also used opioids and methamphetamine.

Aurand’s life is an example of what happens to many people who experience psychosis in the U.S.: a perpetual shuffle from one place to the next for visits lasting hours or days or weeks, none of them leading to longer-lasting support.

This week on Reveal, reporters who made the recent podcast Lost Patients, by KUOW and The Seattle Times, try to answer a question: Why do America’s systems for treating serious mental illness break down in this way?

The answer took them from the present-day streets of Seattle to decades into America’s past.

You can find Lost Patients wherever you get your podcasts:

NPR: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510377/lost-patients

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lost-patients/id1733735613

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1avleoc5U4DA7U37GFPzIH

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• Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly
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