[All visualizations removed for testing as of 17 May 2022]
This web page was born from a wish (mine) to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic is playing out in countries across the globe, large or small, wealthy or poor. Media reports weren't helping. They selectively highlighted numbers, such as the US surpassing 100,000 cumulative deaths (on May 28, 2020) or Italy reporting 887 new deaths (on March 29). But the US and Italy together account for just 5% of the world's population. How do those 2 nations compare with the rest of the world? How do they compare with with each other?
The solution is to "normalize" -- divide reported numbers by populations -- and then compare. So instead of absolute numbers, the emphasis below is on ratios, such as deaths per capita. Elementary arithmetic, namely, what we called long division in school, rides to the rescue. (One day, journalists too will surely remember that they learned this in fifth grade.)
The depictions are devoid of any particular editorial or political slant. It's your prerogative to infer that country X has done a masterful or abysmal job of coping. They are also not predictive -- they don't "model" or foretell what the future holds -- yet they may well suggest that country Y's prospects for the coming weeks are decent or grim. Hopefully they reveal a thing or two you otherwise may not have been aware of. They have done that for me.
Best viewed on a large monitor or one you can easily zoom in or out of.
"Estimated" values are calculated by the simplest possible linear interpolation or extrapolation.
A reasonable starting point for many visitors might be the rankings by total per capita deaths (high and low death countries) or perhaps the rankings by 7-day growth in deaths (high and low death rate countries).
For more details, hover.
If you're looking for a particular country you can search for it by name or three-letter ISO code using your browser's usual find function, typically Ctrl-f.
Some of the depictions below, today's snapshots of country rankings, also show historical rankings, but not as you might conventionally depict a time series. ("Conventional" would be a graph of, say, the price history of General Motors stock.) Since we're trying to make sense of more than 150 countries the conventional view isn't tenable.
Bug fixes and improvements are released every couple of weeks. Current release highlights:
Current version: 22 July 2020. Fixed bug so plots should now really update automatically once per day, at about 21:00 UTC (about 2 PM Pacific Coast time).
These are (presumably PCR) tests for active cases. These data are particularly inconsistent; many countries do not report them at all.
Note the log scale on the y-axis. On a linear scale, a one inch vertical gap between 2 points would represent the same number of tests, anywhere on the plot. Instead a one inch vertical gap on a log scale represents the same % growth in tests, anywhere on the plot. Roughly speaking, large gaps mean large % increases and small gaps mean small % increases.
Note the log scale on the y-axis. On a linear scale, a one inch vertical gap between 2 points would represent the same number of deaths, anywhere on the plot. Instead a one inch vertical gap on a log scale represents the same % growth in deaths, anywhere on the plot. Roughly speaking, large gaps mean large % increases and small gaps mean small % increases.
The "death rate" here is the ratio of deaths over the preceding 7 days over all prior (i.e. cumulative) deaths. It's a measure of how rapidly COVID-19 is spreading within each country. It is decidedly not the same as the IFR (infection fatality rate) nor the CFR (case fatality rate), both of which sometimes occur in discussions of infectious diseases.
A handy trick for anticipating a nation's prospects over the coming weeks is the Rule of 72, something I heard about from Kirk Wolf a few decades ago. (He in turn picked it up from his father.) If you want to guesstimate the doubling time of some quantity without pulling out a calculator, just divide the percentage growth rate into 72. For example, if deaths are growing at 8% per week, you can guesstimate that total deaths will double in roughly 9 weeks (9 = 72 / 8).
See the handy "Rule of 72" above.