Category: Uncategorized

UPDATE: I should have acknowledged the measures that Sweden has taken to contain the spread of COVID-19. I added a sentence to say that below.

Graphs day 59, pandemic day 65, day 136 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 4,405,680

Current worldwide deaths: 302,215

Called it that today would be the day we hit 300,000 deaths. This is the least satisfying, most tragic “called it” ever. Global cases keep on truckin’ at a constant growth rate.

You might have heard someone say something to the effect of “Sweden didn’t shut down their economy, and they’re doing fine.” No they’re not. Of course, Sweden did take a number of measures to contain the spread of COVID-19, such as banning gatherings of more than 50 people and recommending social distancing – but they have allowed many more categories of businesses to continue to operate. Look how much purpler Sweden is compared to all the countries around it (purpler = more people with COVID-19, red = even more):

The difference is even more obvious when looking at deaths per country:

And while other European countries like Spain, Italy, and even Belgium have shown decreases in the growth of case rates – Sweden continues to grow at a constant rate, albeit a lower rate than the U.K. and the U.S.

and in deaths per million people the same trends appear:

…but the death rate in Sweden is increasing at a higher rate than the U.S. and U.K.

In other news, I still have no idea what’s going on with Qatar. The percentage of tests per million people in Qatar is actually lower than in Denmark, which has only one-fifth the case rate. I’ll do some research and report back tomorrow.

In conclusion:

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. Bork bork bork.

Graphs day 58, pandemic day 64, day 135 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 4,308,809

Current worldwide deaths: 296,680

By this point, we have probably already hit the sad milestone of 300,000 deaths, and it should be reflected in tomorrow’s data. The graph of global cases continues to stubbornly increase at the same rate as it has the last two months.

Today’s maps – Qatar has literally gone off the scale in cases:

…but it still very low in deaths:

In fact, Qatar is so weird that they are throwing off the scales of the graphs in both directions. So I’m removing them from the graphs for the moment, but I’ll continue to keep a close eye on them.

It’s an even-numbered day, so we’ll compare countries from the same point in their epidemics. We can, for example, compare the current situation in the U.S. to the situation in Italy at a similar point in the spread of the disease.

I picked the United States and Italy as the comparison for a reason – notice how for the first 40 days or so of their time with COVID-19, they trended together almost exactly. Over the past 30 days or so, the U.S. has blown past Italy. Imagine tracing the curves out – it seems almost inevitable that the U.S. will pass Belgium and then Spain.

For the graph of deaths, look at the U.K. and Italy.

Italy was ahead of the U.K. in death rate for the first 55 days or so, but the U.K. has now pulled ahead.

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.

Graphs day 57, pandemic day 63, day 134 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 4,223,047

Current worldwide deaths: 291,519

I had some more time today to mess with the data, so I’m able to show the results in some new and interesting ways. I’ll skip the maps today and go straight to the graphs.

I realized it’s been a while since I showed you the graphs of COVID-19 cases and deaths in absolute numbers, rather than as rates per million people. It’s always good to remind yourself of what the data really means – in this case, the lines mean increasing numbers of people sick or dead.

Total cases by country by day (apologies, no data labels here, but hopefully you can get the idea from a quick glance, knowing that the line way at the top is the United States):

Total deaths by country by day (same deal):

In a way, this is a better graph, because it’s plotting the thing that ultimately matters – the sick and the dead. In a way, though, it’s a worse graph, because it puts countries on unequal footing. The position on the graph is determined as much by the total population of the country as it is by the severity of the COVID-19 epidemic there. I think that cases and deaths per million gives a more fair representation of the COVID-19 situation in each country, which is why that is the primary way I have been presenting the data. The lesson here is that the best graph to show depends on the question you are trying to answer.

Before I show the usual graphs, I decided to revisit some old friends – countries that I used to track, but stopped tracking because the curve had conclusively flattened. Here is the graph of cases, with lines labeled for the countries with the most cases and the line thickness indicating the case fatality rate in that country. Are the curves still flat?

With the exception of Iran and maybe France, yes. Lesson:

WE CAN DEFEAT COVID-19. STAY THE COURSE, IT’S WORKING!

What about the countries where the curve has not yet completely flattened? As before, some are close to flat, some continue to increase linearly, and some are so early in their local epidemics that cases and deaths continue to increase exponentially. And Qatar is weird, I’m still not sure what’s going on there.

Cases per million people:

Deaths per million people:

I’ll keep following these countries as long as they continue to produce interesting data, and I’ll occasionally check back in with our old friends too.

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 (time for a version update to include the data from the old-new countries, it’s now 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.

Graphs day 56, pandemic day 62, day 133 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases diagnosed worldwide: 4,137,193

Current worldwide deaths: 285,760

Same maps and graphs this time. Things are changing slowly now.

Qatar continues to lead the world in diagnosed cases per million people. I still think those high numbers are due to testing rather than genuine case rates, but I haven’t had a chance to look at the data to prove or disprove that hypothesis. Belgium continues to lead the world in deaths per million people.

I’ve had some interesting discussions with people on whether these numbers can be believed. Of course all measurements come with uncertainty – but the data presented here is our best guess for the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic. If you choose not to believe the data, what do you think we should do instead? Give up? Let people die?

All we can do is to make the best decisions we can with the best data we have. This is the best data we have, and the decisions we are making are the best decisions we know how to make.

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 (now at version 3.1); 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.

Graphs day 55, pandemic day 61, day 132 since the first cases were diagnosed. The total number of cases worldwide has passed four million, meaning it’s time for a new scale on the graph.

Current worldwide deaths: 282,244

It turns out the highest case rate in the world (excluding micro-countries like San Marino) is Qatar. So I expanded the Europe map to include Qatar:

The fascinating thing is that, while Qatar has a very high case rate, they have a very low death rate. Here’s the same map but for death rate:

The case fatality rate in Qatar is only 0.1 percent. I suspect the reason for this is that Qatar is testing the everloving flip out of the entire country, so they are catching more mild cases than other countries are. Deeper in the data I have measures of testing by country, so we can test this hypothesis.

I have also added Qatar to the tracking of cases and deaths by day. Qatar is purple in these graphs. Comparing the graph of cases and deaths makes the situation in Qatar particularly striking.

Cases per million people since mid-February:

and deaths per million people, same scale and colors:

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 (now at version 3.1); 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.