Worldometer is a live statistics collection and counter masstamilan run by an international team of developers, researchers and volunteers who aim to make world data available and time relevant. The company behind the website, Dadax, claims they have no political, governmental or corporate affiliations and only use data from the most reputable organizations and statistical offices in the world.
The site’s humble roots trace back to 2004, when teenage programmer Andrey Alimetov whipped up a simple website using basic programming and your computer’s clock to generate a live count of the world’s population. He sold the site for $2000 a year later, and it’s now owned by American-based Dadax LLC.
Despite its name, the site’s myvuhub counters don’t track live population counts but instead “show the real-time estimate through our proprietary algorithm, which processes the latest data and projections from reputable organizations and statistical offices.” It’s an intriguing way to visualize the world’s demographics, but it’s not without its drawbacks.
Aside from the fact that it’s a largely unregulated business, Worldometer also lacks transparency in how its data is collected and how it is validated. Its founder, Andrey Alimetov, says that his website was designed to be free, but its revenue is generated by advertising and licensing its counters.
As a result, he and other experts have voiced concerns about the website’s reliability. Many have even refused to permit its use on coronavirus-related pages on Wikipedia, citing the site’s anonymous team of analysts and lack of accountability.
Other critics have criticized Worldometer’s teachertn ranking of Spain in terms of testing volume, saying it’s a misleading statistic because it doesn’t take population into account. As of May 17, Our World in Data, an independent statistics website based at Oxford University, placed Spain fifth in total testing volume but 15th in testing per 1,000 people.
That’s because most countries report PCR tests but not antibodies tests. OWID’s data manager, Edouard Mathieu, said it’s better to compare countries by their average testing volume and adjusting it for population size.
In addition, Worldometer’s data for Spain pagalsongs includes a broader category of tests than most other countries’, including polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and antibodies tests. This makes it difficult to know which type of test is most reliable, he told CNN.
Worldometer’s data for Spain has also been criticized by some experts, who argue that it doesn’t include data on care home deaths or other important factors. Moreover, it’s not clear how much of the information it gathers from public health officials is accurate or even complete.
According to an article yareel published by the British Medical Journal, the UK Government’s public health department has stopped using Worldometer as its primary source of data on coronavirus cases because of a number of flaws in its reporting. For example, the site ignored the fact that some deaths were recorded in hospitals or private healthcare centers – which would be less likely to have the same patient ID as nursing home patients.
