Category: Uncategorized

Thank you all for your enthusiasm about my project to make daily(-ish) updated maps of the state of the COVID-19 epidemic in various countries around the world. I’m glad that I have been able to provide a resource that many of you have found useful. I will continue to post updates, but I will also return to my regular schedule of posting new content here most every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I’ve had some fascinating discussions with many of you on various social media platforms about various aspects of the data, and what it means for evaluating our species’ response to the pandemic. Today I want to focus on a question that a friend asked me as part of our discussion on Facebook – and yes, I promise this is an actual friend, not one of those “my friend has a problem” “friends.”

We were talking about how various U.S. states have issued shelter-at-home orders and told businesses to close. Was this a reasonable thing to do? Is the reduction in COVID-19 deaths worth the economic damage that closing so many businesses will likely cause? In the course of this discussion, my friend asked a question I’ve heard in many other places, but I’ve never seen discussed in the way I would like to see it:

Should the government shut down all swimming pools to keep people from drowning?

The answer is No, but the real answer is that this is a terrible and misleading analogy that has no bearing on the COVID-19 epidemic. Let’s explore why, in the way that I like to explore questions on this blog: with data.

To begin to see the difference, the first question we should ask is: how many people per year die by drowning in the U.S.? Obviously, even a single death is a tragedy to someone – but equally obviously, there is a big difference between something that kills 10 people per year and something that kills 10,000 people per year.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, between 2005 and 2014, an average of 3,858 Americans drowned per year (and it’s usually better to use a multi-year average to remove year-to-year fluctuations). Let’s assume that an equal number of people drown every day of the year – I know that in reality, more people drown on weekends in the summer, but we need to compare to a cause of death that has so far killed people only in March, April, and early May. So, let’s assume that since January 1st, 2020, 3858/366 = about 11 people per day have died by drowning. Add them up to get a cumulative death count per day from then until today, May 20th, 2020. Here’s how they compare:

Deaths so far this year by cause

Simple model of drowning deaths: 1,468

Actual deaths due to COVID-19: 91,921

But there’s even more to it than that: drowning isn’t contagious, COVID-19 is! If you have the ill fortune to be there when someone drowns, that does not increase your chances of drowning. We’ll explore the implications of that simple fact in my next post, coming Friday.

Graphs day 63, pandemic day 69 dudes!, day 140 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 4,766,468

Current worldwide deaths: 318,201

Worldwide, COVID-19 continues to grow at a steady rate of about 80,000 cases and 6,000 deaths per day. We may in fact be ahead of my recent prediction, as it looks like we might hit five million cases this Friday (May 22nd).

Non-essential businesses are beginning to open throughout the United States. It is almost certainly too early to safely do so, although as I discuss below, there are some encouraging signs that the rates of new cases and deaths are slowing down in the U.S. Even more encouraging news to be discussed below comes from Slovenia, which recently became the first European country to declare and end to its local COVID-19 epidemic.

I will also be returning to pre-pandemic activity by writing a new blog post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, separate from my daily tracking of the COVID-19 epidemic. On other days, I will provide data updates as I have done for months now.

Cases per million people by country

It’s an odd-numbered day, so let’s look at how the pandemic has played out in real time in various countries since mid-February. Just for today, India is out so I can show Slovenia.

One more change to today’s map of case rates by country – I realized that the map’s color scale should really be the same as the graph’s y-axis scale. So I changed the color scale of the map to have a maximum of 5,000 cases per million. Qatar is still off the scale.

Those are the total number of cases today, and here is the history of cases in our ten selected countries, today including Slovenia:

The curve for Slovenia has been basically flat for more than a month, with fewer than 500 new cases in total reported since April 15th – in a country with a population of more than two million. Congratulations, Slovenia! Be like Slovenia.

Deaths per million people by country

Here is the map of deaths per million people for the usual countries, and also Slovenia. The color scale is the same as ever.

and here is the history of deaths per million people:

The curve for Slovenia is massively flat in this view too. And the curve of deaths per million people in the U.S. is finally, finally beginning to turn over. It’s still hard to see in the graph, but it becomes clearer when looking at the raw numbers. Over the last few days, the U.S. has averaged about 800 deaths per day, down from about 1,700 per day last week and 3,000 per day last month. Experts still believe that it is too early to reopen most businesses in the U.S., but at least the slowing down of the death rate is a bit of good news for a country that desperately needs some good news.

If you want to see the recent deaths rates in the U.S. – or anything else! – I highly encourage you to look for yourself. As always, you can get the data yourself 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!

Different topic tomorrow, but still COVID-19-related. And regular updates continuing as long as the pandemic continues.

Graphs day 62, pandemic day 68, day 139 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 4,679,511

Current worldwide deaths: 315,005

Worldwide, COVID-19 continues to grow at a steady rate of about 80,000 cases and 6,000 deaths per day.

After seeing the good news from Serbia yesterday, I’ve removed it from today’s graph and replaced it with India. There are still not many cases in India, and even fewer deaths. Hopefully it will stay that way. But India is so big and densely populated that it has terrifying potential to become a new epicenter of the pandemic, putting hundreds of millions of people at risk.

Cases per million people by country

It’s an even-numbered day, so let’s look at each country’s experience with the pandemic from an equivalent starting point – the day at which the case rate reached one in one million. The horizontal scale on the graphs show the number of days elapsed since that day.

Cases in the United Kingdom has caught up with Italy at this point in their disease trajectory, and similarly cases in Russia have caught up with those in Sweden. It looks inevitable that cases in the U.S. will catch up with cases in Belgium and Spain, maybe as soon as the end of this week.

Deaths per million people by country

Deaths seem to be down today in a number of countries (indicated by the tip of the curve being flatter today in those countries), but I suspect this is just normal variation rather than a genuine long-lasting flattening. We’ll find out as time goes by.

If you don’t like the way I did this analysis, I encourage you to try it yourself! As always, you can get the data yourself 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!

Update tomorrow-ish, and every day-ish after that until this pandemic is over.

The actual graphs are coming later today, but here I’ll be as lighthearted as I can about this massive global tragedy.

I was talking with a friend last night who said that it wasn’t my fault, but she hates the trends that she sees in these graphs, especially in the U.S. That caused me, completely tongue in cheek, to wonder if it really is my fault. Am I secretly causing COVID-19 by making these graphs?

IMPORTANT NOTE: I AM NOT SERIOUS. THIS IS NOT HOW REALITY WORKS.

Just in case, though, here is a suggestion to the universe for what next week’s graphs should look like:

Cases by country

Deaths by country

Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 0

Current worldwide deaths: 0

Note that these graphs and figures are cumulative case and death counts. What that means is that, starting tomorrow, everyone will be so cured that they never even had COVID-19 in the first place, and all the people who have died will magically come back to life.

This is what I wish would happen, but as author John Green says, apparently the universe is not a wish-granting factory. I’ll keep tracking what actually happens, later today and every day.

Graphs day 61, pandemic day 67, day 138 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 4,597,894

Current worldwide deaths: 311,588

Cases and deaths worldwide

I’ve mentioned several times now that the number of new cases and deaths worldwide have increased at a steady rate since at least early April. It’s amazing how long this trend has held. It’s been long enough that I’m comfortable using that rate to make specific predictions for when we will hit upcoming milestones, at least for the next couple weeks. It’s very hard to predict more than 2-3 weeks ahead, but I think in the short term the progression of the pandemic is easy to predict.

Here’s the graph I’ve been showing for a while now. What’s new today is that I’ve divided both cases and deaths into two phases: an early exponential-ish growth phase and linear-ish growth phase. The black lines are the best-fit lines to the linear growth. It’s not a perfect fit – it never is – but it’s remarkable how close the fit is to the data.

Since April 1st, the number of cases has grown steadily at about 80,000 new cases per day. The number of deaths has increased steadily at about 6,000 per day. That means I’m predicting these as the dates when we will hit the next few milestones:

Five million cases: Saturday, May 23rd

Four hundred thousand deaths: Sunday, June 1st

Six million cases: Thursday, June 4th

Seven million cases: Wednesday, June 17th

Five hundred thousand deaths: Thursday, June 18th

I hope I’m wrong and there are no more cases or deaths. I’ll keep track of actual cases to see how these predictions work out.

Cases and deaths by country

One change to today’s maps: I decided to rescale the case graphs. Qatar is so far ahead of the rest of the world that they would be off the scale regardless, so I might as well rescale the graphs to make the differences between other countries clearer. The scale on the map of deaths by country has not changed.

After talking with some cousins online, I got curious about the history of cases in Serbia. The news actually looks pretty good there, see below.

Cases by country

The map of cases and deaths per capita in Europe and South America:

And the plot of the rate of cases and deaths per capita in these countries, now including Serbia:

The curve seems to have flattened almost completely in Serbia, even more so than it has in Italy. That is great news. Meanwhile the curve continues to grow steadily in the United States, and to accelerate in Brazil and Saudi Arabia.

Deaths by country

The map of deaths by country in Europe and South America has the same color scale as before:

and the plot of deaths per country, now including Serbia:

As always, you can get the data yourself 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!

Update tomorrow-ish, and every day-ish after that until this pandemic is over.