Drew Armstrong profiles the truly outstanding Covid Tracking Project in Bloomberg:

The project is a demonstration of citizen know-how and civic dedication at a time when the country feels like it’s being pulled apart. Yet it’s confounding that, almost a year into the pandemic, the Covid Tracking Project is doing what might be expected of the U.S. government. “It’s kind of mind-boggling that it’s fallen to a group of volunteers to do this,” says Kara Schechtman, one of the project’s early volunteers, who’s since become the paid co-lead for data quality.

This is an equally inspirational and maddening story — volunteers with organization and guidance from a team of journalists working for a 150-year-old magazine doing the grueling work in the middle of a pandemic that could and should be managed by a competent federal government.

Pair this one with Delia Cai’s interview with _The Atlantic_’s Ed Yong about the marathon of covering the pandemic for 8 months.