Since June 2020, Jerry Gryglak has posted daily updates on the subreddit page r/CoronavirusColorado, breaking down the state’s COVID data into a more user-friendly format to give Reddit users a general idea of what the virus is doing in Colorado each day.

Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday will recognize Gryglak as one of Colorado’s COVID Heroes at an award ceremony, where Gryglak will receive a Governor’s Citizenship Medal.

When the health department updates its COVID dashboard, Gryglak creates his post including newly reported deaths and cases, newly tested individuals, current hospitalizations, persons under investigation (hospital patients who have COVID symptoms but have not yet received test results) and positivity rate on the day the site is updated. He also includes this information from the day before as well as from a week ago.

Gryglak said he started compiling the data out of curiosity. It’s all publicly available on the health department’s website, but he simplified it to share with the Reddit community.

“It let me gauge where we were headed and assess my risk tolerance, and that’s what I was hoping that maybe some other people would be able to see,” Gryglak said. “When things were still in the unknown, it helped me decide what I personally felt was safe.”

His posts quickly gained popularity among the subreddit’s followers, and his posts are consistently the top posts on the page.

Posting the data turned into a habit for both Gryglak and the subreddit’s followers. On the year anniversary of his first post, Gryglak said he had to change the typical heading he gave the posts to include the year due to Reddit’s algorithm, and it received an outpouring of comments thanking him for posting as long as he has.

Gryglak said he likes knowing that he has been able to help people he doesn’t even know, and the gratitude that’s been expressed to him is what has kept him posting.

“Being able to help you make a decision that allows you to maybe be a little bit more safe in your life, that’s kind of nice,” Gryglak said. “I like the whole idea of going out of your way to help people … without expecting anything in return.”

Being recognized by the governor for his daily updates was surreal for Gryglak.

“I didn’t realize how much of an impact I was having. I was just posting updates on a social media website,” Gryglak said. “It’s very humbling. I don’t feel very deserving of it because I know there’s a lot more people that have done a lot throughout this pandemic.”

Gryglak said it’s hard to say how much longer he will post his daily COVID updates. He said once numbers start to be consistently low and COVID starts to fade into the background, he might step back from it. But he said that if people still want it, he will keep doing it.