Machine Learning & The Coronavirus

The hot topic which has been in our minds lately is the novel Coronavirus, or the COVID-19. It has affected the lives of many of us, and caused a huge turmoil across financial markets. As a data scientist there is one thing I can always rely on, even in these troubled times -- data. Luckily, data on the COVID-19 spread can be found online (e.g data.humdata.org). While there have been many fields in which data science and machine learning methods have practically solved long-standing problems (language translation, image recognition and sentiment analysis, among many others), there is no possibility that these methods will magically "solve" the Coronavirus crisis; and yet– a better understanding of its behavior, a more careful analysis based on data and meaningful predictions can be beneficial for decision making and policy setting.