Graphs day 323, pandemic day 330, day 401 since the first cases were diagnosed.
Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 103,412,282
Total deaths: 2,232,405
Just a very quick update today while I look into some other trends in more detail. Usual graph formats, click for a larger version of each.
Countries that have consistently gotten it right
Countries where COVID-19 was stayed mostly contained throughout the pandemic
Countries where COVID-19 is currently under control(-ish)
Countries where COVID-19 was bad but are now sort of under-control-ish
Countries moving in the right direction(-ish)
Regions where cases are still high but are currently stable
Countries where the pandemic is still awful
Regions where the epidemic is still raging
Fortunately, even in these countries, cases are beginning to decrease; although in the meantime, Spain has moved ahead of the U.S. into first place on this graph in terms of cases per day.
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).
Graphs day 321, pandemic day 328, day 400 since the first cases were diagnosed. That’s right, it has now been 400 days since Dr. Li Wenliang officially diagnosed the first few cases of the new disease now called Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Just over a month later, Dr. Li had died of the disease.
Today’s sad totals:
Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 102,579,774
Total deaths: 2,206,445
Remember how we said a few months ago that as we get better at diagnosing less severe cases, the case fatality rate (CFR) would get closer to the biological value, which was likely around 2 percent? The case fatality rate is currently 2.2 percent.
Here are the usual graphs, with countries divided into the same categories as on Tuesday. 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.
Countries where COVID-19 was stayed mostly contained throughout the pandemic
When we last checked in last Tuesday, Japan seemed to be in a phase of an increased number of cases. Today, it is much clearer that cases are once again declining in Japan, after having peaked at 40 new cases per million people per day about two weeks ago.
Plenty of people have told me they do not believe the case and death numbers coming out of China. That’s fair enough; there are lots of reasons to not believe China.
But do you believe the case and death numbers coming out of New Zealand, Australia, India, and Japan?
Countries where COVID-19 is currently under control(-ish)
Countries where COVID-19 was bad but are now sort of under-control-ish
When we looked on Tuesday, there seemed to be a slight increase in Chile, Peru, and Canada. The daily case load definitely seems to have decreased in Canada, and seems to be leveling off in Chile and Peru.
Countries moving in the right direction(-ish)
These countries, all in Europe, experienced nightmarish COVID-19 disease waves in the fall – some of the worst in the world – bur fortunately for now have seen cases stabilize at a lower level.
Regions where cases are still high but
The good news is that these three European countries seem to be doing well. Cases continue to decrease in Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy.
The bad news is that Italy is experiencing a wave of sometimes-violent protests against the necessary restaurant closings. If the current protests lead to an increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths in Italy over the next two to four weeks. Obviously I hope they will not, but nature cares not for our hopes. I’ll let you know how it goes either way.
Countries where the pandemic is still awful
Lastly, the countries where the pandemic is still infecting and killing lots and lots of people: Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and Brazil.
Regions experiencing a second wave of cases
Fortunately, even in these countries, cases are beginning to decrease; although in the meantime, Spain has moved ahead of the U.S. into first place on this graph in terms of cases per day.
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).
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.
Countries where COVID-19 was stayed mostly contained throughout the pandemic
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)
Countries where COVID-19 was bad but are now sort of 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)
Regions where cases are still high but
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.
Regions experiencing a second wave of cases
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).
Guest Post! One of the joys of being alive is having smart, curious friends to talk with – or to write guest posts for your blog. I’d love to see more of these, especially from friends with perspectives and opinions different from my own – email me your ideas!
Aaron talks about an important question in today’s age of COVID-19: are people actually following the CDC’s advice to avoid large holiday gatherings?
Because I’m a nerd who works in data for a living, I wanted to see what evidence we have for people staying home this Thanksgiving.
In a widely reported prediction, AAA forecasted a 50% drop in air travel but only a 10% drop in overall travel. But, of course, we have to remember it’s the AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE Association that is saying that AMERICANS are robustly driving AUTOMOBILES this holiday. They don’t cite the source for their forecast, other than to say it was based on mid-October “models.” Even if those unexplained “models” are reliable, they still don’t include the impact of the last six weeks of the fall COVID-19 surge – or the whole prediction could be just a bunch of marketers throwing darts at a board.
Anyway, I looked at Google Trends for the word “traffic” a few days before the 2019 Thanksgiving vs. the last few days. Days on which more people search for the word “traffic” presumably are days on which more people are driving their cars. I graphed the results on the same relative y-axis scale, to place them on the same zeropoint – the vertical axis goes from zero percent (the number of Google searches for “traffic” on the day in which the fewest people searched for “traffic”) to 100 percent (the number the day the most people searched for “traffic.”). The graph is below.
Google searches for the word “traffic,” relative to the number of searches on December 1, 2019
The graph does indeed show an almost 50% drop year-over-year.
In the same article, AAA predicts the peak travel time to be the afternoon of the day before Thanksgiving. This is supported by last year’s Google Trends search data, which shows that searches for the word “traffic” did indeed peak on the day before Thanksgiving, which in 2019 came on Wednesday, November 27th.
Relative searches for the word “traffic” in the days before Thanksgiving 2019
Indeed, looking at the traffic over the days leading up to Thanksgiving 2019 does indeed show a jump of about 50% from Tuesday to Wednesday. We could look at the same trends in 2020 – except that at the moment, Google’s data only goes to up to 1 AM ET on Wednesday November 25th. So we’ll have to wait until at least tonight to see how many people searched for “traffic” yesterday (Wednesday). I’ll post an update here later for those of you on the edge of your seats.
I also checked Google Trends for recent searches for “turkey recipe,” with the assumption that in 2020, fewer large group gatherings will mean less turkey being cooked, because people don’t want to cook a turkey for a smaller group – although this could be debated, since four families staying home instead of going to grandma’s could mean four dead turkeys instead of one). The graph below shows the number of Google searches within the U.S. for “turkey recipe” from just before Thanksgiving 2019 to just before Thanksgiving 2020.
Google searches for “turkey recipe” by day, using a relative scale from zero to 100
Indeed, Google Trends shows that turkey recipe searches are down 25% over this time last year. Interestingly, the graph below shows U.S.-based Google searches for “honeybaked ham,” again between just before Thanksgiving 2019 and just before Thanksgiving 2020, again on a relative scale.
Searches for “honeybaked ham” from Thanksgiving 2019 to Thanksgiving 2020 on a relative scale
Searches for “honeybaked ham” are up almost exactly 25% over last year! Does this mean people prefer ham with smaller gatherings? Or that, when no one is looking, we all actually prefer ham over turkey? Count me in that group.
I also looked at searches for “flight status,” and those searches are down about 75% over this time last year.
My prediction
How will these trends hold up over the next few days? And – more importantly – what impact will this week end up having on COVID-19 cases in the U.S. over the coming weeks?
My prediction: overall, automobile travel will be down about 25% over last year and flights down about 50-75% over last year. So, about a third of our country is planning to do less for Thanksgiving than they would typically do. Which would make sense given our political makeup. About 1/3 are very liberal and take COVID-19 super seriously. About 1/3 are very conservative and believe it’s all fake. And 1/3 believe it is real and are concerned enough to make small to medium changes in lifestyle, but not enough to make major changes in lifestyle such as skipping a traditional Thanksgiving gathering.
Thus, we should see a surge in cases starting around December 6th. If I’m right, it may start out at about a 30% jump over this week’s pre-Thanksgiving rates… before the increase goes exponential.
My Mac’s processor trying to keep up with the calculations required by my COVID-19 spreadsheet
Unfortunately, COVID-19 has affected so many people in so many places that my spreadsheet has gotten too big to work with. Going from the raw data provided by the Corona Data Scraper citizen science project to my graphs now literally takes about 4 hours of constant attention to Excel. I’ll have to rethink my approach.
Most likely I’ll do the preprocessing in Python, a simple but powerful programming language used by scientists all over the Universe. I’ll try to provide step-by-step instructions on how to how to run Python, and to document my programs extensively, so you can try them yourself. Even though Python can make graphs, I plan to continue making the graphs in Excel, because it’s a simple tool that so many of you already know how to use.
It might be a few days until my next COVID-19 update. In the meantime, I’ll keep posting other things on my usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, including something coming later today.
Graphs day 181, pandemic day 188, day 258 since the first cases were diagnosed.
I took some time off to work on some other projects, including a very cool study of federal banking data with my JHU colleague and friend Mac McComas (you’ve heard from him here before). What’s the biggest factor in who gets loans in Baltimore City and who does not? Spoiler alert: it’s race.
But the virus never takes a day off, and since I made my last graph, another nearly 7 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and more than 120,000 have died. We are rapidly closing on one million deaths. Not bad for a virus that we are pretty sure had not infected even a single human one year ago.
Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 28,524,156
Total deaths: 902,224
I’m once again using data from the amazing online volunteer effort that is the Corona Data Scraper project. I explained how the project works in more detail in a previous post, but in short a worldwide team of volunteers has written a complex set of Javascript programs to automatically retrieve and process data from thousands of individual sources, primarily national, state, and local health departments. In other words, please don’t tell me it’s a conspiracy. It literally can’t be. At no point was all the data in the hands of any person or entity until it shows up on their website and I paste it into my template. And don’t tell me I’m the conspiracy – I have always been entirely transparent about what I do here, and I always will be, even though it costs me significant time and effort and even a little bit of money. As always, you can download the template at the bottom of this post and see for yourself.
It took me literally most of the day to get the data cleaned and into my template, so I don’t have any new graphs to show you today. But here is an updated version of one I posted recently, showing COVID-19 case rates in various metro areas in Florida. Usual graph styles apply.
COVID-19 cases in metro areas in Florida
There is definitely cause for cautious optimism from this graph, but with two caveats. First, the case rate is still ahead of where it was during the first peak of the Florida epidemic in late March. Second, schools are a savage vector for virus transmission, and schools in many parts of Florida have been open for a little more than two weeks. So if there is going to be a third wave of infection that results, we should start seeing it riiiiiiiiiight about now. Let’s hope we don’t.
I obviously haven’t been living up to my initial plan to post an update every day of the pandemic, but why not start now? Another update tomorrow.
Want to give these graphs a try? Please do! Here, for the first time, is version 8 of my template. Beware, it’s big, it will take several minutes per calculation. Be sure you have Excel set to manual calculations.
Pandemic updates tomorrow. And probably not literally every day until the pandemic ends? But the virus is tenacious, and so am I.
