Graphs day 81, pandemic day 87, day 158 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 6,706,022

Total deaths: 394,713

In today’s update, we look at how cases and deaths stack up against my predictions, and learn an important lesson about data visualization. And at the request of my awesome friend Jeremy, we look at cases and deaths in Ireland, in place of India. As you’ll see, there’s not much reason to keep following Ireland, so we’ll return to following India tomorrow.

Cases and deaths worldwide

Ever since I issued my predictions on May 17th, I’ve been tracking how my predictions match up with reality. We have continuously seen how the curve of cases (red dots) is running far ahead of the predictions (black line):

When I was graphing deaths on the same scale, it looked like cases were way ahead my prediction, and deaths were slightly behind my prediction. But here’s what happens when I split deaths into a separate graphs (deaths are the purple dots, the prediction is again the black line):

Deaths are falling behind my prediction just as dramatically as cases are rising ahead. There’s an important lesson here:

When you make a graph, always use the most appropriate scale to show the effects you want to show!

Still no maps today, and it’s an odd-numbered day. Let’s look at case and deaths by country from mid-February to the present.

Cases per million people by country

Cases per million people by country – India is gone this week in favor of Ireland (lavender). All countries are labeled as usual; percentages indicate the case fatality rate in each country, from 0.6 percent in Belarus to 11 percent in Sweden. Also note that I fixed the image so you can click on it for a larger version.

The curve for Ireland is high, but it’s been almost completely flat since late May. Meanwhile, Chile is the Energerizer Bunny of countries – cases keep going and going and going…

Deaths per million people by country

Same color scheme as before, but now showing deaths per million people by country – again with Ireland as lavender, and again clickable:

Deaths in Ireland are just as flat as cases. So there’s no reason to continue tracking Ireland. We’ll return to tracking India tomorrow.

Want to try it yourself? Try it yourself! 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 3.3). 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.