UPDATE: I should have acknowledged the measures that Sweden has taken to contain the spread of COVID-19. I added a sentence to say that below.

Graphs day 59, pandemic day 65, day 136 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 4,405,680

Current worldwide deaths: 302,215

Called it that today would be the day we hit 300,000 deaths. This is the least satisfying, most tragic “called it” ever. Global cases keep on truckin’ at a constant growth rate.

You might have heard someone say something to the effect of “Sweden didn’t shut down their economy, and they’re doing fine.” No they’re not. Of course, Sweden did take a number of measures to contain the spread of COVID-19, such as banning gatherings of more than 50 people and recommending social distancing – but they have allowed many more categories of businesses to continue to operate. Look how much purpler Sweden is compared to all the countries around it (purpler = more people with COVID-19, red = even more):

The difference is even more obvious when looking at deaths per country:

And while other European countries like Spain, Italy, and even Belgium have shown decreases in the growth of case rates – Sweden continues to grow at a constant rate, albeit a lower rate than the U.K. and the U.S.

and in deaths per million people the same trends appear:

…but the death rate in Sweden is increasing at a higher rate than the U.S. and U.K.

In other news, I still have no idea what’s going on with Qatar. The percentage of tests per million people in Qatar is actually lower than in Denmark, which has only one-fifth the case rate. I’ll do some research and report back tomorrow.

In conclusion:

As always, 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 (version 3.2). I’d love to see what you can build with it!

Update tomorrow-ish, and every day-ish after that until this pandemic is over. Bork bork bork.