I talked earlier today about what makes COVID-19 such a unique threat compared to other causes of death, but of course I’m not going to miss an opportunity to GRAPH THINGS! I’ll keep this short and to the point.

Graphs day 66, pandemic day 72, day 143 since the first cases were diagnosed. Today is the unfortunately day that COVID-19 cases reached five million worldwide in my dataset – a full day before I had predicted it would be.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 5,067,579

Total deaths: 332,711

This means that I had to change the scale on my graph once again; now it goes up to six million. If the current rate of growth continues, it will be less than two weeks before I have to rescale it again.

Cases by country

Here in the United States, states are beginning to reopen, and people are shouting that “the curve has flattened!”

Look this plot of diagnosed cases of COVID-19 per million people in countries around the world, and compare the curve for the U.S. to curves for countries like Italy, Spain, and Belgium.

This not a curve that has flattened.

You can get the data that I used to make these graphs 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, and I’m happy to help you figure it out!

Update tomorrow, and every day after that until this pandemic comes to an end.