Tag: covid-19

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.

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.

Graphs day 154, pandemic day 161, day 231 since the first cases were diagnosed. Today, let’s go back to the data from the JHU Coronavirus Resource Center and look at national-level graphs (since my version 7 spreadsheet has a template already set up for that).

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 21,879,368

Total deaths: 773,781

Happy Independence Day to two countries today: Indonesia (the world’s fourth-most-populous country) and Gabon (a country of two million people in central Africa with one of the world’s coolest national anthems). We’ll include lines for both countries in today’s post.

Usual graphs and labels for all five categories today. All five graphs are in the usual styles. The main graph is on the regular scale, from zero to 200 new cases diagnosed per day per million people – with the exception of the “getting worse” graph, which runs from zero to 300. Where there are smaller inset graphs, they are on the “Qatar scale,” which runs from zero to 700 cases per million people. Each country gets a unique color in each graph (although the colors can repeat across graphs). Line labels show the name of the region, and also the mortality rate (cumulative deaths per million people) in the region – cumulative because the dead stay dead. The thickness of the lines and the size of the labels depend on the cumulative case fatality rate – the number of people who died divided by the number diagnosed.

Regions where COVID-19 was quickly contained

After 101 days with no local transmission of COVID-19, New Zealand experienced its first local case on day 102. There’s a very slight uptick in cases there and in South Korea, but keep it in perspective: the total number of cases in both places is still very low.

Regions where COVID-19 is currently under control(-ish)

France is still ticking depressingly upward. If cases in France reach 52 per million people per day – half of their peak in mid-April – I will sadly move them into the Second Wave category.

Regions moving in the right direction(-ish)

Gabon is on this graph (purple line). Reported cases have gone up and down somewhat, but never above 75 cases per million people per day. Qatar had a bump within the past two weeks, but it appears to have passed for the moment. And unfortunately Sweden seems to be on an uptick again, but it’s still too early to tell if it’s a real increase or just random variation. Antlers crossed that Sweden’s herd immunity strategy is working, but it’s really not looking good at the moment.

Regions experiencing a second wave of COVID-19 cases

The second wave is maaaybe over in Australia, but keeps getting worse in Spain.

Regions where the first wave of COVID-19 continues to get worse

I showed some different regions today. I’m showing Georgia on the main graph, but I forgot to swap them in for Florida on the Qatar scale inset, so you get a bit of both today. This is where Indonesia goes also. Cases are clearly increasing in Indonesia, but they are increasing very slowly and are still at a quite low level.

Coming up tomorrow: a break from the COVID-19 graphs and a return of the series about people and things who are Not What They Seem: enjoy a new episode of Except They Weren’t.

Want to give these graphs a try? Please do! Here is version 7.3 of my spreadsheet, which is just like version 7.2 but is now updated with data up to yesterday.

Pandemic updates tomorrow, and every day until the pandemic ends or I do.

Graphs day 153, pandemic day 160, day 230 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Total cases of COVID-19 diagnosed worldwide: 21,389,903

Total deaths: 772,373

Today’s Excel graph update comes from my weird home state of Florida. We’ve been following cases there for quite a while, but with the county health department data collected by Corona Data Scraper, we can look at patterns around the state in much greater detail. We’ll look at five urban areas: Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Pensacola – and Clewiston, a town of 7,000 people on the south shore of Lake Okeechobee. (Technically the data we’re looking at for the first four is for their metropolitan statistical areas, and Clewiston’s is for its micropolitan statistical area.)

Graphs are in the usual format, on the “Miami scale,” which runs from zero to 1,000 cases reported per million people per day. Urban areas are color-coded and labeled. Line thicknesses and label sizes are proportional to case fatality rates.

I also looked at the Jacksonville metropolitan area, and it follows almost exactly the same trend as Orlando.

And speaking of Florida, the Wang Mansion has sold! It’s now listed as Pending on Zillow. Which one of you lucky readers purchased it? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see my post from July 2020, Wangception.)

Want to give it a try? Please do! Here is my new spreadsheet (version 8), although God help you until I document it better. The good news is that you should only need to change the worksheet called Graphs, and only refer to the sheet called Daily to get the codes for each country. Also be warned, it’s so big that it calculates sloooooooooooooooowly. You will probably want to go to Settings -> Calculation and change Calculation Options to Manual. Then the spreadsheet will only calculate its updated numbers when you tell it to, by pressing F5 on Windows or Shift-Enter on Mac.

Pandemic updates tomorrow, and every day until the pandemic ends or I do.