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Day ten of me graphing data, day sixteen of the pandemic (as declared by the World Health Organization), day eighty-seven since the first cases were reported in Wuhan. Pause for a moment and think about how fast this thing has spread – as of today, more than 500,000 cases have been reported worldwide.

Cases per million people

Today the United States has passed China to become the country with the largest number of total reported cases (85,991 for the U.S. vs. 82,079 for China and 80,539 for Italy). That’s 261 cases per one million Americans, as shown in the per capita graph below – four times the case rate of China, but still one-fifth of the rate in Italy.

The rate at which new cases are being diagnosed continues to slow slightly in Italy, continues to increase at a frightening clip in Spain and Belgium, and sits somewhere in the middle in the U.S.

Some of the growth, particularly in the U.S., is likely due to more widespread testing rather than people being newly infected. That’s only mildly good news, though, because until testing rates get much higher, there are still lots of people transmitting COVID-19 who don’t know they are transmitting COVID-19.

Deaths per million people

Sigh, I rescaled the graph again, the total death rate in Italy is now 136 deaths per million Italians (the green line in the graph below).

Deaths per million people have also increased sharply in France (blue dashed line) and Belgium (solid black line).

You can find the data from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data site (download the CSV file from the “Full dataset” lin), and you are welcome to use my Microsoft Excel template. I’m working on some new graphs for future updates, you should too!

The good news is that I had some company for today’s graphing – my cat Simon colonized my lap and refused to leave until I finished writing this post. Here’s the adorable selfie:

Update tomorrow, and every day until this pandemic is over – on both the data and the cat.

Day nine. Once again presenting the graphs of COVID-19 cases and deaths per million people for various countries that have been discussed in the “news” in the last few weeks. Remember that these are per-capita graphs, which make the data easier to interpret in some ways and harder in some other ways.

In yesterday’s charts, it appeared that the rate of new case reports had begun to slow down in Italy and the United States. How does the chart look today, March 26th, 2020?

Cases per million people

Italy, yes, it looks like the case rate is slowing down. United States, not so much.

Here are the number of new cases reported each of the last five days in each country. Obviously it’s hard to find a trend after 5 days, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in either column – but the stories for Italy and the USA look like different stories.

Date	Italy	USA
2020-03-22	6,557	7,123
2020-03-23	5,560	8,459
2020-03-24	4,789	11,236
2020-03-25	5,249	8,789
2020-03-26	5,210	13,963

Regardless, it’s far too early to think about relaxing social distancing measures in either place. We’ll keep an eye on these numbers over the coming weeks.

Deaths per million people

Sadly, it’s time for another rescale, as the total number of deaths in Italy goes above 7,500 in a country of 60 million, for 125 total deaths per million people. Spain is not far behind with 73 deaths per million people.

You can find the data from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data site (download the CSV file from the “Full dataset” lin), and you are welcome to use my Microsoft Excel template. I’m working on some new graphs for future updates, you should too!

Update tomorrow, and every day until this pandemic is over.

Day eight. Once again presenting the graphs of COVID-19 cases and deaths per million people for various countries that have been discussed in the “news” in the last few weeks. Remember that these are per-capita graphs, which make the data easier to interpret in some ways and harder in some other ways.

Some good news and some bad news in today’s charts. First, the charts:

Cases per million people

Deaths per million people

The bad news comes from the Deaths per million people graph. Italy is now literally off the chart. For the past few days, I have been plotting the vertical axis (deaths per million people) between 0 and 75, but the cumulative death rate from COVID-19 in Italy today has hit 113 per million (6,820 deaths so far in a country of 60 million people). I reset the scale to run from 0 to 120 cumulative deaths per million people. I fear I will likely have to reset the scale a few more times before the dying levels off.

The maybe good news might come from the graph of cases per million people. It looks like the slope of the line for Italy is starting to turn over. While the total number of cases in Italy is still increasing because new cases are still being reported, fewer new cases are being reported today than a few days ago. Some experts (which I am not) have interpreted this as showing that social distancing measures in Italy have begun to work. We’ll see if this trend continues.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can find the data from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data site (download the CSV file from the “Full dataset” lin), and you are welcome to use my Microsoft Excel template. Some of you have sent me graphs and ideas (hi David! hi Aimee! Hi Ed!), and I’ll respond to you once I’m more caught up on my Actual Job.

Update tomorrow, and every day until this f@cking terrible pandemic is over.

Day seven of me doing this. You all seem fairly comfortable with the graphs of cases and deaths per million people for various countries, so those are the graphs I’ll show today. But please remember that these are per capita, so low values here for the U.S. and China still represent a lot of cases and deaths.

I also realized that the per-capita graphs contain a bit of an optical illusion, making it look like the line for China is going down. That is of course impossible – these are cumulative total cases, so the numbers can only either stay the same or go up as new cases are reported. I’ll look at ways to make this clearer in tomorrow’s update.

Cases per million people

Reported rates of COVID-19 continue to grow at an alarming rate throughout Europe, and are approaching that growth rate in the U.S. as well. Case rates in Iran, the U.K., and Australia are growing more slowly.

I am wondering if, instead of total numbers of diagnosed cases, I should be graphing the number of new cases diagnosed each day. That would mean that people diagnosed in the past who have recovered would not be included on the graph, and it would also make it more directly comparable with the “flatten the curve” diagrams that many people are sharing.

Deaths per million people

Countries that have recently seen an increase in reported cases per million people are just now beginning to see an increase in reported deaths per million people. These numbers are likely to increase as more time passes.

For this plot, I’m pretty sure that cumulative deaths is the right thing to graph, because once someone becomes dead, they stay dead.

Remember the purpose of all of this – the data are out there, and you can understand it with the tools that you already have. You can find the data from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data site (download the CSV file from the “Full dataset” lin), and you are welcome to use my Microsoft Excel template.

Update tomorrow, and every day until this pandemic is over.

Day six of me doing this. Same four graphs as usual, same color scale as usual. The United States has now passed China in terms of all-time COVID-19 cases per million people.

Total cases

Total deaths

Cases per million people

Deaths per million people

Remember the purpose of this – the data are out there, and you can understand it with the tools that you already have. You can find the data from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data site (download the CSV file from the “Full dataset” lin), and you are welcome to use my Microsoft Excel template.

Update tomorrow, and every day until this pandemic is over.