Author: Jordan Raddick

Graphs day 68, pandemic day 74, day 145 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 5,273,572

Total deaths: 341,722

As the graph below shows, the rate of new cases continues to increase above the linear fit I had calculated before. That means we’ll hit six million cases well before my original prediction of June 4th.

A change to the ECDC schema broke my Python script, so no maps until I get that figured out. It’s just a matter of some time and stubbornness, so it shouldn’t be more than a few days.

Cases by country

Today is an even-numbered day, so here is the graph of the relative state of the epidemic, showing the number of cases by the number of days elapsed since the case rate reached 1 in 1,000,000.

The United States has now passed Belgium – not only Belgium at the equivalent point (day 78), but Belgium’s rate today. Spain is next. Brazil’s rate looks like it may have stabilized at a new, higher, value – but we’ll know for sure daqui a alguns dias.

Deaths by country

The graph of cumulative deaths by country continues to look roughly the same as it has for a the last month:

With case rates, it’s not clear whether the best thing to plot is the number of new cases per day (which would be more bell-curve-like) or cumulative cases, which is what I’ve been showing here. But with deaths, it’s clear that cumulative is the right thing to graph. Because the dead stay dead.

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 (time for a version update, it’s now 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.

Graphs day 67, pandemic day 73, day 144 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 5,175,476

Total deaths: 338,039

For comparison, COVID-19 has now killed more people than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Depressingly, the rate at which new cases are diagnoses is once again increasing. Take a look at this plot of global cases and deaths, with best-fit lines showing the rate of new cases and deaths since April 1st. Look how each of dots representing the number of cases lie further and further above the line over the the last four days.

If this continues, I’ll have to redo my line fits and thus redo my predictions of when we will hit the next milestones of six million cases and 400,000 deaths.

Cases by country

In today’s maps, look for Belarus and Peru, both of which have turned a worrying shade of tomato red. We’ll keep watching both over the next few weeks.

And sadly another rescale on the graph, as the case rate in Spain has passed 5,000 per million people.

Despite that, the curve for Spain is remaining quite flat – which means that the curve for Spain will inevitably be passed by the curve for the United States, which continues to increase at a constant rate. Although they may all be passed by Brazil, whose curve is turning in entirely the wrong direction.

Deaths by country

The death rate in Sweden continues to creep up; it’s now nearly ten times that of neighboring Norway.

…and the death rate in the United Kingdom has nearly equaled that in Italy.

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 3.2). 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.

I talked earlier today about what makes COVID-19 such a unique threat compared to other causes of death, but of course I’m not going to miss an opportunity to GRAPH THINGS! I’ll keep this short and to the point.

Graphs day 66, pandemic day 72, day 143 since the first cases were diagnosed. Today is the unfortunately day that COVID-19 cases reached five million worldwide in my dataset – a full day before I had predicted it would be.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 5,067,579

Total deaths: 332,711

This means that I had to change the scale on my graph once again; now it goes up to six million. If the current rate of growth continues, it will be less than two weeks before I have to rescale it again.

Cases by country

Here in the United States, states are beginning to reopen, and people are shouting that “the curve has flattened!”

Look this plot of diagnosed cases of COVID-19 per million people in countries around the world, and compare the curve for the U.S. to curves for countries like Italy, Spain, and Belgium.

This not a curve that has flattened.

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 3.2). 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.

On Wednesday, I wrote about one of the many fascinating conversations I have had as a result of my continuing series plotting the history of the COVID-19 pandemic in real time. I was talking with a friend (pictured to the right, although it’s totally not him) about one of the most persistent misconceptions that we encounter in discussing COVID-19: that somehow it’s not so bad, because people die all the time.

Three thousand Americans a year die by drowning, the logic goes, so should we close all the pools in the country to protect them?

Of course we don’t close all the pools in the country, because the magnitude of the problem makes a real difference. I looked at what the differential death rates between drowning and COVID-19 actually mean. But of course, even that isn’t the real reason that we protect ourselves from COVID-19. As I pointed out at the very end of Wednesday’s post:

Drowning isn’t contagious.

But what if it was?

Like in this sketch from the classic comedy series The State, which has nothing to do with the rest of the post but you should watch because it’s funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjOvmSY8tws&feature=youtu.be&t=885

But here’s what I really meant: what if being present when someone drowns increased your chance of drowning yourself? That would be a pretty cool horror movie plot, kind of like The Ring – but let’s run with it and see us where it takes us.

Everything else is the same, people continue to drown at a rate of about 11 a day, just like they have every other year. But this year, starting on March 1st, drowning magically became contagious. Whenever someone drowns, their drowning causes others to drown two weeks later. There is no way to predict exactly how many other people will drown, but on average it will be around 2 or 3 – let’s say 2.3.

As you’ll see once I get to the math, this small change makes a tremendous difference in how many people will die. You can probably see where this argument is going. We’ll keep talking about drowning here, and then we’ll pivot back to COVID-19 at the end. And it will be even worse than it looks.

How bad would it be?

Remember the rules we set out for this model: starting on March 1st, drowning magically became contagious. By that date, already 632 people have drowned. Another 11 people drown on March 1st.

Nothing appears different at that time, but the wheels are in motion – as a result of each of those drownings, an average of 2.3 more people will inevitably drown in two weeks. Every day until March 14th, it continues – 11 more people people drown each day, and each of them infects an average of 2.3 people.

Every day from March 15th to 28th, 35 people drown.

Every day from March 29th to April 11th, 90 people drown.

Every day from April 12th to April 25th, 219 people drown.

Every day from April 26th to May 9th, 514 people drown.

Every day from May 10th to today, 1,193 people drown.

Total amount of people who have drowned in this model: 28,290

Imagine this situation: in a normal year, 1,507 people would have drowned by this point. This year, 28,290 people have drowned. If this were the case, would you support temporarily closing pools to figure out why, even if it causes some economic turmoil?

It’s even worse than that.

See the graph below, an adaptation of the graph I showed on Monday. The blue line is drowning in a regular year. The green line is this year’s contagious drowning. The orange line is COVID-19.

In every other year in American history, zero people died of COVID-19. So far this year, 94,702 Americans have died of COVID-19. More deaths are coming.

Graphs day 65, pandemic day 71, day 142 since the first cases were diagnosed. Time for a more extensive update of the data.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 4,960,975

Total deaths: 327,904

Last Sunday, I predicted that the number of cases of COVID-19 worldwide would reach five million this Saturday, May 23rd. Well, unfortunately, Worldometers says we’re there already. That doesn’t count as a successful prediction yet, though – I’m predicting based on my data, which is updated in the morning and thus lags behind the Worldometers data. But there’s no question that tomorrow, I’ll have to rescale the graph to above five million.

Here’s that graph. The black lines are still the best-fit lines to total cases and deaths from April 1st to today. They still fit well, but notice how the last six orange points are consistently above the line. That is the graphical representation of the fact that new cases are being diagnosed faster than my prediction suggested.

The next milestone is four hundred thousand deaths due to COVID-19. I had predicted that we would reach 400,000 on June 1st – but now it appears it could happen as soon as next Tuesday, May 26th. I don’t like being ahead of schedule.

Cases per million people by country

New to the maps this week, for both cases and deaths: I have encouraged people to compare the rates in Sweden to the rates in the countries around Sweden. I’ve made it easier to do that by adding data labels for Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Estonia.

and the graph of cases per million people in our usual countries:

The U.S. is getting perilously close to becoming the top country on the graph. And on the other end is India, just beginning to turn over – at the beginning of what could be a long, brutal stretch of sickness and death.

Deaths per million people by country

The comparison between Sweden and its neighbors is even clearer when you look at deaths per million people – 379 per million in Sweden compared to 43 per million in Norway.

and rounding out our usual graphs, the number of deaths over time in the same ten countries:

Don’t like what I graphed? Graph it yourself! You can get the data from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data; choose “all four metrics.” You are welcome to use my Excel template (version 3.2). I’d love to see what you can build with it, and I’m happy to help you figure it out!

Coming tomorrow: my friend (the same one I talked about yesterday) asked this in a comment:

“What sets COVID apart from these other mass killers?”

– My awesome friend

I’m so glad he asked, because that’s exactly what I’ll be talking about tomorrow!

And more COVID-19 data updates, as long as we need them.