I love flags, and it’s Flag Day.

I love Australian rules football, and the Australian Football League just signed a broadcast deal with ESPN that will bring unprecedented exposure to the sport in the U.S. and worldwide.
And instead of talking about either of those things, here I am giving you another damn update about this damn global pandemic.
Graphs day 89, pandemic day 94, day 165 since the first cases were diagnosed.
Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 7,759,691
Total deaths: 430,127
Here is the usual graph of cases reported worldwide each day. The blue line is actual number of cases, the red line is a smoothed average.

Clearly we still haven’t hit the peak of cases worldwide, and it’s likely to be a long slow slog until we do.
Cases per million people by country
Here is a map of today’s cumulative cases per million people (since the beginning of the epidemic):

Cases in Chile are continuing to skyrocket; soon I’ll need to rescale the map once again.
Countries headed in the right direction

Great news from this graph today – cases per million people in the U.K. are almost down to the level of Belgium, a country where the epidemic is clearly under control. And Belarus, where the curve looked like it might be flat, is definitely decreasing. Curves for the U.S. and Russia continue to be flat as a delicious American pancake. This might require a new category in my next update.
Countries getting worse

Although cases in Chile decreased today, cases are often down on weekends. I think Chile is still getting worse. The curves for Saudi Arabia and Sweden now overlap completely, at least for today..
Deaths per million people by country
Here’s the map of deaths per million people, focused on Europe and the Americas:

and the curves of cumulative deaths over time in our usual ten countries:

After a long period of very few deaths in Chile, deaths are now increasing rapidly.
Coming up tomorrow: it’s a Monday on the usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, so look for a longer post. It’ll still be about COVID-19. It’s always about COVID-19 these days.
Want to try out some of these graphs for 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’re still welcome to use my Excel template – I added a section for making the deaths graph to what is now version 4.1, so that is the only one you need.
Update tomorrow, and every day after that until this pandemic comes to an end. Then months and months of just flags.
NCAA Cup results
And, just for fun at the end of this post, an update on the ongoing NCAA Cup.
Yesterday’s results
McNeese State 89 Stony Brook 86
South Florida 81 Kansas State 53
Today’s schedule
Noon ET: Hartford (19-14, NET #246) at Illinois State (10-21, NET #196)
4 PM ET: Charlotte (17-13, NET #176) at Texas-Arlington (13-18, NET #129)
8 PM ET: Butler (23-9, NET #19) at Nebraska (8-25, NET #199)