5 Questions with DJ Patil
Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2025 3:37 am
Season Two of Catalog and Cocktails started off in thrilling fashion with hosts, Juan Sequeda and Tim Gasper, spending an hour with the first ever U.S. Chief Data Scientist, DJ Patil.
The episode touched on a variety of topics including the U.S. pandemic response, using data to sow mistrust, and the ethical use of data. The following five questions are excerpted from the podcast. You can check out the entire recording here.
DJ Patil's favorite books found during the pandemic.
Juan Sequeda: Favorite podcast, book or show discovered during the pandemic?
DJ Patil: Well, I guess I got two here that I think are phenomenal reads, or strongly recommend. One is “Power to the Public.” It's by Tara McGuinness and Hana Schank, and I think they have the best overview of how data and technology and design all come together to actually make government function and what happens when it doesn't. And then a very specific one is Jer Thorpe's book, “Living in Data”, which I can't recommend strongly enough. It really takes you inside how data can be used for just a more human perspective.
What did we learn about data during the pandemic?
Juan: So DJ, honest, no BS question: Did we learn anything when the pandemic hit with respect to data?
DJ: Yeah, I think we've learned something that we've known for a long time is that we haven't been ready and we haven't taken it as seriously as we need to. And what do I mean specifically by that? Well, we've known from the first SARS outbreak, MERS and other diseases that we need to have very strong reporting of data; we need to have tracking ability to find things, contact tracing, all these things [that] President Obama highlighted.
There was a whole playbook that was built after Ebola, and Congress hasn't taken it seriously with funding it, and the CDC and others haven't been able to implement the right plans. Luckily, our brazil whatsapp number data vaccination investments have paid off. There's decades-long investments by the National Institutes for Health that have paid off. But what we've also seen is the incredible underfunding of local governments, local public health officers not having the tools at their disposal to understand things. Epidemiological modeling is so far behind relative to where we are in other types of forecasting, or just think weather forecasting or other types of economic forecasting.
And then we have a real big issue here on understanding this information, distrust, and how information is propagated, and we're not able to get to people fast enough either to understand public health issues such as something very simple about wearing a mask, or the importance of getting vaccinated, or even good hygiene, and taking the pandemic seriously.
How data is used to tell compelling stories.
Tim Gasper: That point that you make at the end there about data and its role in the pandemic, and how people are interpreting that information is especially acute for me. It makes me think about how each sort of side of the conversation is obviously using data, but using it to tell their own story.
The episode touched on a variety of topics including the U.S. pandemic response, using data to sow mistrust, and the ethical use of data. The following five questions are excerpted from the podcast. You can check out the entire recording here.
DJ Patil's favorite books found during the pandemic.
Juan Sequeda: Favorite podcast, book or show discovered during the pandemic?
DJ Patil: Well, I guess I got two here that I think are phenomenal reads, or strongly recommend. One is “Power to the Public.” It's by Tara McGuinness and Hana Schank, and I think they have the best overview of how data and technology and design all come together to actually make government function and what happens when it doesn't. And then a very specific one is Jer Thorpe's book, “Living in Data”, which I can't recommend strongly enough. It really takes you inside how data can be used for just a more human perspective.
What did we learn about data during the pandemic?
Juan: So DJ, honest, no BS question: Did we learn anything when the pandemic hit with respect to data?
DJ: Yeah, I think we've learned something that we've known for a long time is that we haven't been ready and we haven't taken it as seriously as we need to. And what do I mean specifically by that? Well, we've known from the first SARS outbreak, MERS and other diseases that we need to have very strong reporting of data; we need to have tracking ability to find things, contact tracing, all these things [that] President Obama highlighted.
There was a whole playbook that was built after Ebola, and Congress hasn't taken it seriously with funding it, and the CDC and others haven't been able to implement the right plans. Luckily, our brazil whatsapp number data vaccination investments have paid off. There's decades-long investments by the National Institutes for Health that have paid off. But what we've also seen is the incredible underfunding of local governments, local public health officers not having the tools at their disposal to understand things. Epidemiological modeling is so far behind relative to where we are in other types of forecasting, or just think weather forecasting or other types of economic forecasting.
And then we have a real big issue here on understanding this information, distrust, and how information is propagated, and we're not able to get to people fast enough either to understand public health issues such as something very simple about wearing a mask, or the importance of getting vaccinated, or even good hygiene, and taking the pandemic seriously.
How data is used to tell compelling stories.
Tim Gasper: That point that you make at the end there about data and its role in the pandemic, and how people are interpreting that information is especially acute for me. It makes me think about how each sort of side of the conversation is obviously using data, but using it to tell their own story.