Who is Kelley K?
My name is Kelley Krohnert, and I am a Georgia mom who has been analyzing Covid data since May 2020. I have a double major from Emory University in Psychology and Educational Studies. After college, I pursued a career in the information technology field. For several years, I worked for an IT security company in roles such as Technical Writer, Research & Database Manager, and IT Compliance Manager, before deciding to stay home and raise my daughter and work part-time as a self-employed IT consultant. Throughout much of my career, I’ve been known as someone who could quickly research and digest new information and then communicate that data to others, which has been much of what I’ve done with Covid data.
My initial focus was with the Georgia Covid data, then I started working to get schools reopened and back to normal, and now my focus has expanded further, and I am identifying and analyzing flawed and misleading science and data in many areas relating to Covid. If you want to learn a little more about me and my efforts over the past few years, see my interviews by Matt Shapiro and Restore Childhood.
What is Check Your Work?
Check Your Work is based on the work I have been doing for several years on Twitter as @kelleykga — analyzing and sharing data, fact checking news articles, critiquing scientific studies, and reading and sharing helpful information about Covid. My analysis and writings have been praised by several well-known scientists and doctors, including Dr. Francois Balloux, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Alasdair Munro, and Dr. Vinay Prasad.
One of my main areas of interest has always been Covid and kids, because even when I was nervous about the virus initially, the one thing that reassured me was the early data that kids were at extremely low risk, so I never once worried about my daughter, who was in middle school at the time. I knew that for most kids, getting back to the classroom was essential, so they weren’t sitting at home on Zoom.
I enjoy digging in and exposing the faulty claims in the media and by supposed experts about Covid. I do that a lot on Twitter, but my Substack is where I can write more in-depth analysis of trending news and studies — mainly about Covid for now, but I would like to expand this over time. Some highlights of my efforts:
I identified an inflated count of pediatric deaths on the CDC’s Data Tracker Demographics page, which led to a correction by the CDC and an article in the BMJ about the error.
I debunked the CDC’s claim that Covid is a top 5 leading cause of death in children. The claim was based on a flawed pre-print by UK scientists, and their paper was revised based on my feedback.
I wrote a paper with Vinay Prasad, Tracy Beth Hoeg, and Alyson Haslam that includes many errors identified by myself and others throughout the pandemic — “Statistical and numerical errors made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the COVID-19 pandemic”.
I provided research and analysis to Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Rep. Andrew Clyde to help them identify and call out false statements made by CDC Director Walensky to them during Congressional testimony.
