The actual graphs are coming later today, but here I’ll be as lighthearted as I can about this massive global tragedy.
I was talking with a friend last night who said that it wasn’t my fault, but she hates the trends that she sees in these graphs, especially in the U.S. That caused me, completely tongue in cheek, to wonder if it really is my fault. Am I secretly causing COVID-19 by making these graphs?
IMPORTANT NOTE: I AM NOT SERIOUS. THIS IS NOT HOW REALITY WORKS.
Just in case, though, here is a suggestion to the universe for what next week’s graphs should look like:
Cases by country
Deaths by country
Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 0
Current worldwide deaths: 0
Note that these graphs and figures are cumulative case and death counts. What that means is that, starting tomorrow, everyone will be so cured that they never even had COVID-19 in the first place, and all the people who have died will magically come back to life.
This is what I wish would happen, but as author John Green says, apparently the universe is not a wish-granting factory. I’ll keep tracking what actually happens, later today and every day.
Graphs day 61, pandemic day 67, day 138 since the first cases were diagnosed.
Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 4,597,894
Current worldwide deaths: 311,588
Cases and deaths worldwide
I’ve mentioned several times now that the number of new cases and deaths worldwide have increased at a steady rate since at least early April. It’s amazing how long this trend has held. It’s been long enough that I’m comfortable using that rate to make specific predictions for when we will hit upcoming milestones, at least for the next couple weeks. It’s very hard to predict more than 2-3 weeks ahead, but I think in the short term the progression of the pandemic is easy to predict.
Here’s the graph I’ve been showing for a while now. What’s new today is that I’ve divided both cases and deaths into two phases: an early exponential-ish growth phase and linear-ish growth phase. The black lines are the best-fit lines to the linear growth. It’s not a perfect fit – it never is – but it’s remarkable how close the fit is to the data.
Since April 1st, the number of cases has grown steadily at about 80,000 new cases per day. The number of deaths has increased steadily at about 6,000 per day. That means I’m predicting these as the dates when we will hit the next few milestones:
Five million cases: Saturday, May 23rd
Four hundred thousand deaths: Sunday, June 1st
Six million cases: Thursday, June 4th
Seven million cases: Wednesday, June 17th
Five hundred thousand deaths: Thursday, June 18th
I hope I’m wrong and there are no more cases or deaths. I’ll keep track of actual cases to see how these predictions work out.
Cases and deaths by country
One change to today’s maps: I decided to rescale the case graphs. Qatar is so far ahead of the rest of the world that they would be off the scale regardless, so I might as well rescale the graphs to make the differences between other countries clearer. The scale on the map of deaths by country has not changed.
After talking with some cousins online, I got curious about the history of cases in Serbia. The news actually looks pretty good there, see below.
Cases by country
The map of cases and deaths per capita in Europe and South America:
And the plot of the rate of cases and deaths per capita in these countries, now including Serbia:
The curve seems to have flattened almost completely in Serbia, even more so than it has in Italy. That is great news. Meanwhile the curve continues to grow steadily in the United States, and to accelerate in Brazil and Saudi Arabia.
Deaths by country
The map of deaths by country in Europe and South America has the same color scale as before:
and the plot of deaths per country, now including Serbia:
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.
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.
Graphs day 58, pandemic day 64, day 135 since the first cases were diagnosed.
Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 4,308,809
Current worldwide deaths: 296,680
By this point, we have probably already hit the sad milestone of 300,000 deaths, and it should be reflected in tomorrow’s data. The graph of global cases continues to stubbornly increase at the same rate as it has the last two months.
Today’s maps – Qatar has literally gone off the scale in cases:
…but it still very low in deaths:
In fact, Qatar is so weird that they are throwing off the scales of the graphs in both directions. So I’m removing them from the graphs for the moment, but I’ll continue to keep a close eye on them.
It’s an even-numbered day, so we’ll compare countries from the same point in their epidemics. We can, for example, compare the current situation in the U.S. to the situation in Italy at a similar point in the spread of the disease.
I picked the United States and Italy as the comparison for a reason – notice how for the first 40 days or so of their time with COVID-19, they trended together almost exactly. Over the past 30 days or so, the U.S. has blown past Italy. Imagine tracing the curves out – it seems almost inevitable that the U.S. will pass Belgium and then Spain.
For the graph of deaths, look at the U.K. and Italy.
Italy was ahead of the U.K. in death rate for the first 55 days or so, but the U.K. has now pulled ahead.
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.
Graphs day 57, pandemic day 63, day 134 since the first cases were diagnosed.
Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 4,223,047
Current worldwide deaths: 291,519
I had some more time today to mess with the data, so I’m able to show the results in some new and interesting ways. I’ll skip the maps today and go straight to the graphs.
I realized it’s been a while since I showed you the graphs of COVID-19 cases and deaths in absolute numbers, rather than as rates per million people. It’s always good to remind yourself of what the data really means – in this case, the lines mean increasing numbers of people sick or dead.
Total cases by country by day (apologies, no data labels here, but hopefully you can get the idea from a quick glance, knowing that the line way at the top is the United States):
Total deaths by country by day (same deal):
In a way, this is a better graph, because it’s plotting the thing that ultimately matters – the sick and the dead. In a way, though, it’s a worse graph, because it puts countries on unequal footing. The position on the graph is determined as much by the total population of the country as it is by the severity of the COVID-19 epidemic there. I think that cases and deaths per million gives a more fair representation of the COVID-19 situation in each country, which is why that is the primary way I have been presenting the data. The lesson here is that the best graph to show depends on the question you are trying to answer.
Before I show the usual graphs, I decided to revisit some old friends – countries that I used to track, but stopped tracking because the curve had conclusively flattened. Here is the graph of cases, with lines labeled for the countries with the most cases and the line thickness indicating the case fatality rate in that country. Are the curves still flat?
With the exception of Iran and maybe France, yes. Lesson:
WE CAN DEFEAT COVID-19. STAY THE COURSE, IT’S WORKING!
What about the countries where the curve has not yet completely flattened? As before, some are close to flat, some continue to increase linearly, and some are so early in their local epidemics that cases and deaths continue to increase exponentially. And Qatar is weird, I’m still not sure what’s going on there.
Cases per million people:
Deaths per million people:
I’ll keep following these countries as long as they continue to produce interesting data, and I’ll occasionally check back in with our old friends too.
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 (time for a version update to include the data from the old-new countries, it’s now 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.
