Graphs day 36, pandemic day 42, day 113 since the first cases were diagnosed. I missed yesterday’s post, so this is data update XXXV and data update XXXVI. I’m recommitting to my goal of posting a data update each and every day. As of today, more than 2.5 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and nearly 175,000 have died.

The last few days I thought I had seen the global case count turn over to sublinear, but no, it keeps chugging away at a constant rate.

Here are the usual graphs, updated through today, April 22, 2020. Not too much. has changed since Monday, although it looks like the epidemic has begun to quiet down in France and Japan. But of course we won’t really know anything until at least one virus incubation period has passed. Keep an eye on France, Japan, Italy, and Switzerland’s curves over the coming two weeks.

For most of the last 36 days, the cases in the United States have tracked along with cases in Italy on a delay – made clear by our usual graph of cases by day after the case rate reached 1 in 1,000,000. Well, the U.S. is not tracking Italy anymore – the rate of growth looks more like Belgium’s.

Speaking of Belgium… sadly I had to rescale the graph of deaths per million to display Belgium’s 517 deaths per 1,000,000 people:

The graph also shows that the deaths per capita in the U.S. will almost certainly pass Switzerland tomorrow. As the following graph shows, that is in spite of the U.S. being a week earlier in its epidemic (day 45 since the rate reached 1 per million compared to day 52 in Switzerland).

When looking at number of deaths per million people, the United States is nearly caught up to Switzerland:

…and is ahead of where Switzerland was at this point in the epidemic:

I’m actually done with the maps of cases and deaths by country, but they won’t be useful until I also figure out how to make a color scale. That will probably be tomorrow, unless insomnia makes it tonight.

Thanks to everyone who has told me that they find these regular graphs useful. I haven’t been able to respond to you all individually, but I’ll take some time to talk with you online this weekend.

You can get the data yourself from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data; choose “all four metrics.” You are welcome to use my Excel template to make your own graphs; here is an updated version (version 2.3).

Update tomorrow, and every day after that until this pandemic is over.