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!