This was my experience trying to work with the Johns Hopkins COVID data.
I don't know if Johns Hopkins became the canonical data source because they were amongst the first to have public data and charts, but honestly I was kinda surprised at the low quality, coming from a group called "Center for Systems Science and Engineering". Their data was far harder to use than it needed to be, even months into the pandemic.
Fortunately there were a handful of other projects dedicated to making it sane and resolving the inconsistencies, unreconciled changes in format, etc... that was really helpful.
I don't know if Johns Hopkins became the canonical data source because they were amongst the first to have public data and charts, but honestly I was kinda surprised at the low quality, coming from a group called "Center for Systems Science and Engineering". Their data was far harder to use than it needed to be, even months into the pandemic.
Fortunately there were a handful of other projects dedicated to making it sane and resolving the inconsistencies, unreconciled changes in format, etc... that was really helpful.