1) No dataset is perfect, and everything leaves traces, so clever people can and do constantly deduce insights from apparently worthless data.

2) It is in the interest of the Chinese to cooperate with submitting these CRF's to their best ability.

3) The little data the WHO does release to the public seems quite accurate for an outbreak, if you look at the log-linear plots and so on. (I am not saying the "known infections" represent the actual number of infections, just that it looks like accurate reporting of exactly that "known infections", and if one reads the forms you see it was designed to take into account overcapacity effects, like sending a patient back home, forwarding to a different hospital, etc...).

>I'm sure there's a database for this outbreak in there somewhere, but I'm also sure the data presently in it is useless.

What do you mean with "in there somewhere" ?

1) If you mean the WHO has the database, then of course the WHO has the CRF database, that's what my original message pointed out.

2) If with "in there somewhere" you meant that it's publically available on their website, then no, it isn't it explicitly states it isn't:

" State Parties are invited to contribute Anonymized nCoV Data to the nCoV Data Platform. State Parties should please contact WHO at EDCARN@who.int to obtain more information about, including log-in credentials for, the nCoV Platform.

To preserve the security and confidentiality of the Anonymized nCoV Data, State Parties are respectfully requested to take all necessary measures to protect their respective log-in credentials and passwords to the nCoV Data Platform. "

So they are sitting on the data as I originally claimed. On some of the clearly popularity boosted "contra-infodemic" threads, they even openly admit they can't give more detailed information even though they have access, when people ask them what they base their numbers on. [throughout the rest of the threads they typically go to great lengths to give the impression they work on the same aggregate numbers you and I can publically see, as if there is no censorship on the anonymized CRF data]

Also, why would I care about live to the minute data? I am looking for the actual data (noisy or not), and I don't care if it's delayed by a few days.

As I said, I am would like to build a statistical model.

As a lesson, perhaps not for this epidemic, but then the next: if the average chinese person can afford a smartphone, then surely they can afford a couple of UV-C LED's with a battery pack, with the LED's shining through a reflective manifold (think a pipe bent back and forth with U-bends), then breathing airflow together with proper dose (X mJ per square cm) should sterilize microbes, viruses in the air. Then it just needs to be recharged, instead of trying to manufacture 61Mega masks a day. The air sterilizer (to be attached to a face mask) could be reused for new epidemics every 5 or 10 years (in which time they might have bought 3 or 4 cell phones...)

EDIT: I see on change.org that there have been petitions towards the WHO on other issues before, perhaps someone should submit a petition to release the CRF database to the public domain. And it's not a question of hosting bandwidth, since the WHO can publish cryptographic hashes, and put up torrent magnets...