COVID-19: a Tale of Two Countries

March of this year coronavirus exploded in Europe, including in Switzerland, hit with over 16,000 cases (nearly 2,000 per million population) by month’s end. Worse yet, new cases were spreading rapidly. The disease was slower to arrive in Sweden, with fewer than 2,000 total cases by the end of March for the whole nation: a mere 190 per million population, less than one tenth the rate seen in Switzerland.

Where’s Waldo? (COVID-19 edition)

Through 2020-May-05.

COVID-19 Update: 2020-May-02

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DAILY DEATH RATE

Keep Lockdown, because YOU ARE SAVING LIVES

The news lately includes talk of the USA reaching a “plateau” in the spread of COVID-19. It’s based on incomplete and imperfect data (as has been pointed out by many), but the daily death toll is probably the best indicator and it has definitely stopped rising like it was during late March and early April:

The reason: preventive measures like social distancing, masks, handwashing, lockdown, staying home, all the things people have been doing to protect themselves and others. Those things are working. Without those measures, the death toll would have kept rising and today, it would be horrific.

So: congratulate yourselves. YOU ARE SAVING LIVES.

Keep Lockdown

It’s interesting to look at the map of COVID-19 cases by state:

The bigger the red circle, the higher that state’s number of new COVID-19 cases per day per million population.

Downward-pointing blue triangle: rate is falling (congratulations, New Jersey).

Upward-pointing black triangle: rate is rising (watch out, Iowa and Nebraska).

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Coronavirus in Your State

Many have seen the graph of total deaths in the U.S. from coronavirus:

Also worth knowing is the daily mortality, the number who die each day:

Lockdown WORKS

Over 2400 Americans died yesterday from Coronavirus. Here are the new deaths per day (“daily mortality”) in the USA since March 10, 2020 (note: this is an exponential plot)

Coronavirus Update USA

In just the last two days, over 3900 people died from Coronavirus in the U.S.A. The total U.S. death toll now stands at 14,788 (and rising). [Note: day 10 is March 10, 2020.]

Coronavirus: Washington DC Fumbles, Washington State Scores

February 28th of this year, Washington state became the first in the U.S. to record a death due to coronovirus.

As of today the nationwide death toll is over 6,000. I’ve been looking at the total fatalities by state, for the U.S. states with the highest death counts (so far). Here are the totals over time for states with at least 100 fatalities to date (note this is plotted on a logarithmic scale):

Social Distancing Works

First, the bad news.

The death toll from Coronavirus in the U.S.A. stands at 4,059, and more alarming is the fact that yesterday brought nearly a thousand deaths in a single day. The numbers keep rising.

America has confirmed 188,639 cases (many more unconfirmed), more than any other country in the world (although Italy leads in fatalities with 12,428). The total number of cases in the U.S. shows a very unfortunate and frankly, scary trend: exponential growth.