Graphs day 135, pandemic day 142, day 212 since the first cases were diagnosed. It’s been a full week since my last update post; I’ve spent the whole week completely rewriting my spreadsheet.

There are enough cases in enough regions, and there have been for so long, that my spreadsheet became completely unworkable. Each calculation took more than a minute to complete. So I implemented two tricks: I switched rows and columns, and I replaced some complex formulas with their values. The result is that I am back here again giving you updates.

And what an update it is. Last time I posted, Earth had just passed 15 million total cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Today, we passed 17 million cases.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 17,029,155

Total deaths: 667,011

It’s Independece Day in Vanuatu, but Vanuatu is one of the few countries left in the world that has zero cases of COVID-19. Let’s hope they stay that way.

Here is an update on our usual four categories. Sadly, Japan has joined Australia as a country where COVID-19 had been contained but is now getting worse. Spain, Belgium, and Peru may soon join them. And then there’s Florida.

Always Florida.

Regions where COVID-19 was quickly contained

Usual graphs and labels for all four categories today. Note that Japan is gone from the “quickly contained” category this week, and that I’m reporting cases in Hubei (the province whose capital is Wuhan) separately from those in the rest of China.

I continue to marvel at how well China controlled the spread of the pandemic outside Hubei. That is, of course, if you believe these case numbers. There are some reasons to believe that these numbers are correct, and some reasons not to believe this numbers are correct. All I can say is that I do the best job I can to clearly and objectively graph the numbers I get from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, and provide enough interpretation and guidance so you can understand what they mean.

But as I’ve said before: if you’re a COVID-19 denier, this doesn’t support your position, it supports the opposite of your position. Are you saying that China has reason to suppress their true number of cases but literally every other country has reason to exaggerate their true number of cases, because reasons?

Regions where COVID-19 is currently under control(-ish)

Tragically, cases in Spain continue to rise like Robbie Van Persie in the 2014 World Cup.

Regions moving in the right direction(-ish)

Sadly, there were more cases in Peru yesterday than in either Qatar or Chile. On the other hand, yesterday daily cases in Sweden dropped to their lowest level since late March. All along, Sweden has been betting that their less stringent approach to social distancing would produce better long-term results than other countries. And maybe they were right? But we still won’t know until we get longer-term death figures from many more countries.

Regions where the epidemic is getting worse

Reluctantly I had to rescale the main graph up to 300 cases per million people to accommodate Brazil and South Africa (although South Africa has since dropped below 200 daily cases per million again. Florida remains on the Qatar scale.

In the past week, cases in Florida have stabilized – although they are still not decreasing, they are at least not increasing. Provided of course you believe the numbers from Florida. As with China, there are reasons to believe that cases are being underreported.

It’s time for a new version of the spreadsheet, now up to version 7. In the sheets called Finder and Cumulative, formulas have been replaced by values for faster calculation. The formulas are available next to the value blocks, but you’ll have to copy and fill them yourself if you want to try changing anything.

Pandemic updates tomorrow and every day until the pandemic ends or I do.

Graphs day 128, pandemic day 135, day 205 since the first cases were diagnosed. Earth has hit another milestone today.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 15,227,535

Total deaths: 623,385

Data for U.S. metro areas coming next week. Today, another update on regions around the world, including Florida.

Regions where COVID-19 was quickly contained

Everywhere that COVID-19 has been contained, it is still contained. Even Hubei.

Regions where COVID-19 is currently under control(-ish)

Cases continue to tick up in Spain, frighteningly.

Regions moving in the right direction(-ish)

This graph is getting quite busy, I might reconsider which countries to include. Sweden is actually looking really good at the moment. On the other hand, Peru looks like it’s well on the way to a second wave of cases.

Regions where the epidemic is getting worse

It’s still a bit hard to tell what’s going on with Florida. Unfortunately, because of the 3-5 day period in which COVID-19 can be transmitted pre-symptomatically, any change of policy will take at least 3-5 days to have an effect on cases.

Coming tomorrow: an Unsolved Mystery! And pandemic updates still coming, every day until the pandemic ends or I do.

Graphs day 127, pandemic day 134, day 204 since the first cases were diagnosed. IF you don’t get the reference, here’s the reference.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 14,947,428

Total deaths: 616,443

I finished my new Excel spreadsheet (version 7, now combining U.S. and global data into one spreadsheet). You would not believe how much work it was. After this crisis is over, buy me a beer and I’ll tell you. I miss seeing you all in person.

Now that the new spreadsheet is finished, I can compare any of the reported subregions against any others, or any combination of subregions. These subregions include all U.S. counties and county equivalents, and provinces/states of other countries. Unfortunately, the dataset I’m using does not have all global subregions; frustratingly, it lacks the provinces of Italy and Spain.

I’ve been testing this approach recently by reporting data for Florida (see How Screwed Is Florida? Answer: still screwed.) Today, I’ll start tracking another region: Hubei, the Chinese province that contains the city of Wuhan – and presumably, the unknown location where COVID-19 jumped from bats and/or pangolins to humans.

I’ll show the timelines in the usual four categories, but this time including Florida and Hubei, and also the rest of the U.S. and the rest of China.

Regions where COVID-19 was quickly contained

Hubei is in blue, and the rest of China is in red. Hubei had significantly more cases and deaths than the rest of China, but still fewer than most of the countries in other categories. And note that the rest of China had almost no cases, meaning the Chinese people did an absolutely amazing job of containing the epidemic.

If you believe the official numbers reported by China, that is. There are some good reasons to believe those numbers and some good reasons to not believe those numbers. If you’re a COVID-19 denier, that might give you some hope, but think about it for a moment. Are you really saying that China has incentive to undercount and report fewer cases than there really are, but literally every other country has incentive to overcount and report more cases than there really are?

That makes no sense.

Regions where COVID-19 is currently under control(-ish)

Unfortunately, some of these countries are experiencing large increases in cases and may not be long for this category – particularly Spain and Belgium. If daily cases per capita get to half their previous peak (which would mean 84 cases per million in Spain and 62 per million in Belgium), I’ll reluctantly move them into the “getting worse” category.

Regions moving in the right direction(-ish)

Belarus is nearly ready to move into the “currently under control” category after a long, slow decrease, which is great news. Formerly stratospheric countries Qatar and Chile are rapidly decreasing, which is also great news. On the other end, cases are increasing in Peru.

Regions where the epidemic is getting worse

And then there’s Florida.

Two consecutive days of decrease in Florida turned out to be only temporary; cases are back up again today. Cases in Brazil seem to be steadily decreasing, but after what happened with Sweden, I’m not quite ready to move them into the “moving in the right direction” category.

My spreadsheet allows me to combine regions in any grouping, not just by state. Coming soon, probably next week:

I’ll add cases in the New York metro area.

But coming Friday: not just an unsolved mystery, but an Unsolved Mystery. Sorry, not the Rey Rivera one, I’m still researching. But this one will be fun, I promise. Join me – perhaps you may be able to solve a mystery!

If you haven’t seen it already, check out the awesome news result from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey that I was fortunate to be a part of. I’ll tell you more about it in a future post. But for now, COVID-19.

Graphs day 125, pandemic day 132, day 202 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 14,507,132

Total deaths: 606,167

I’m working on a new spreadsheet that will allow me to compare any counties states in the U.S. with any regions in the world – not just countries, but also regions within countries. I’m particularly interested in looking at how current COVID-19 hotspots like Florida compare to past hotspots like Lombardy, Italy and Hubei, China (the province where Wuhan is located).

Here’s the formula that I wrote in one cell of the spreadsheet:

=IF(IFERROR(XMATCH(INDIRECT(CONCAT("'",$B$1,"'!$",$E$1,"$",$A11)),'Areas of interest'!$A$1:$A$99999),-1 <> -1, IF(INDIRECT(CONCAT("'",$B$1,"'!$",$E$2,"$",$A11))="US",INDIRECT(CONCAT("'",$B$1,"'!$",$E$3,"$",$A11)),INDIRECT(CONCAT("'",$B$1,"'!$",$E$1,"$",$A11))),IF(INDIRECT(CONCAT("'",$B$1,"'!$",$E$2,"$",$A11))="US",INDIRECT(CONCAT("'",$B$1,"'!$",$E$1,"$",$A11)),INDIRECT(CONCAT("'",$B$1,"'!$",$E$2,"$",$A11))))

Did I mention that I like spreadsheets?

Here is the update for cases in Florida, compared to the usual comparison countries.

Cases have decreased in Florida the last two days. Hopefully that’s the beginning of a longer trend. We’ll find out as we go.

Update tomorrow, and every day until the pandemic ends or I do.

Graphs day 124, pandemic day 131, day 201 since the first cases were diagnosed. Unfortunately, today is the day we’ve been waiting for. Earlier I had predicted that Earth would reach 600,000 deaths due to COVID-19 on July 23rd. Four days early, that number has arrived.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 14,288,357

Total deaths: 602,138

In last Monday’s post, I compared cases in Florida to cases in countries around the world. The state of the pandemic in Florida then looked far worse than in most other countries. How does it look now, six days later?

Unfortunately, even worse. Florida is shown by the green line in the graph below.

The smoothed per capita rate of new cases in Florida today is 525 per million people, far higher than any of the countries we have been tracking and similar to the rate at the worst of the epidemic in Chile.

Longer update tomorrow as part of the usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, and updates (almost) every day until this terrible pandemic is over.

Graphs day 123, pandemic day 130, day 199 since the first cases were diagnosed. I just got back from a lovely five days of socially distanced camping in Shenandoah National Park. As much as I’ve enjoyed making these graphs for you most of the last 123 days, it was really nice to go five full days without graphs. But it’s nice to be back, and I’m energized and ready to go.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 14,055,299

Total deaths: 596,518

We’ll almost certainly reach six hundred thousand deaths tomorrow, fully four days before my previous prediction.

Cases by country

Quick global update today, with our usual graph style and usual four categories. Not much time for detailed analysis today, but I’ll have a more detailed post on Monday.

Countries where COVID-19 was quickly contained

Maybe a slight increase in Japan, I’ll keep a close eye on how things evolve there.

Countries where COVID-19 is now under control

I’m afraid that there has been an increase in cases in many of these countries, particularly Spain. This could indicate that a second wave is coming. But fortunately, the case rates are nowhere near what they were at the peaks.

Countries that are headed in the right direction(-ish)

Qatar and Chile are back on the main graph again, and it looks like the decrease in Sweden is a real decrease. The case rate in Belarus is currently 17.9 per million. If it drops below 10 per million, I will gleefully move it to the “COVID-19 is under control for now” category.

Countries where the epidemic is getting worse

The case rate in the U.S. and South Africa has exceeded 200 cases per million, at 202 and 206 respectively. Tomorrow I will reluctantly add a “Qatar scale” to this graph so we can see the full range of case rates.

Want to try out some of these graphs for yourself? You can get the data that I used to make the country graphs from Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) COVID-19 data site. Click on csse_covid_19_data, then on csse_covid_19_time_series, then download all the CSV files. Or clone the whole repository from GitHub.

You are welcome and encouraged to use my Excel templates. I’ve tinkered enough that I’m plus-plusing the version to 5.1. I have two separate templates: a global data template and a U.S. state data template.

Update tomorrow, and approximately every day until the pandemic ends.