Graphs day 315, pandemic day 322, day 392 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Between The Most Important Election Of Our Lifetimes (TM), the holidays, and preparing for my first-ever virtual American Astronomical Society meeting, it’s been months since I’ve kept my promise to create daily graphs of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 has been busy, and the resulting graphs are almost unbearably sad.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 99,725,495

Total deaths: 2,140,073

There is no silver lining here, I might as well just show you the numbers. In the immortal words of Stringer Bell:

Let’s again take a look at how some different countries are handling the COVID-19 pandemic. As a reminder, graphs show the history of the pandemic from late January 2020 to today – just about exactly one year. Countries are color-coded and labeled by name. The thickness of the lines and the sizes of the labels correspond to the case fatality rate in the country – thicker lines and larger labels indicate countries where a larger percentage of COVID-19 cases have led to death. Click on any of the images for a larger version.

Countries that have consistently gotten it right

These countries have consistently kept their per-capita cases of COVID-19 at very low levels.

Last summer, we were worried about a wave of new cases in Australia, but looking back on it, per capita cases in Australia are barely even visible on this graph. Joining them on this graph are India (happy Republic Day BTW, enjoy your republic while it lasts!), New Zealand, Japan – and China, even Hubei province where the whole pandemic began.

What do these countries have in common?

You already know the answer to that, even if you like to pretend that you don’t.

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

Last spring and summer we were watching things get bad in Qatar, Chile, and Peru, but they all appear to be doing OK right now – although cases are ticking back up in Chile and Peru. Cases were increasing in Canada but they are now decreasing again.

Countries moving in the right direction(-ish)

While we were away, the pandemic got very, very bad in Europe, particularly Belgium. Fortunately, cases are headed down, but they are still far higher than they should be.

Countries where the pandemic is still awful

Lastly, the countries where the pandemic is still infecting and killing lots and lots of people: the United States, Spain, the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, and Brazil.

Fortunately, cases are decreasing everywhere except Spain.

I’ll be here again tomorrow. I’ve promised to keep doing this until the pandemic ends. I hope the pandemic ends.

Methods

Sadly, Corona Data Scraper has stopped reporting data in the way I was using it, so I have gone back to using the data from the JHU Coronavirus Resource Center. You can download the data from their GitHub repository. You are welcome to use my Excel spreadsheet (version 9.2).