Statistics & Stories: How Every Nation Has the COVID-19 Response It Deserves
April 2020
Here in suburban Philadelphia, the COVID-19 crisis has been unfolding close to home. The usually quiet community hospital where my wife is an ICU nurse has been transformed into a regional treatment center with dozens of COVID+ patients spread across three newly dedicated floors. Masks have been rationed, but thankfully each week seems to be bringing a bit more organization and supplies.
Overall, Montgomery County, PA was hit earlier than most- so we have already been in lockdown for several weeks. At both the county and state level, the response was quick, and communication clear — so it looks like we may pull through better than some of our neighboring states.
The early lock down also has given me a surplus and unhealthy amount of time to spend on Twitter! On a wider scale, it’s been completely surreal watching the range of how other states and nations have been coordinating their responses — and I was reminded of a quote by late 18th-century philosopher Joseph de Maistre : “Every nation has the government it deserves”.
As articles and tweets pour in from across the world, it becomes increasingly clear that COVID-19 is working like a deadly bitter truth serum, revealing all too clearly many of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each region and nation it infects.
In America, the outbreak has become one of the ultimate media hype events of all time. Without any sports to watch, the epidemic is the real time action fix for the entire country — providing both the statistics and storylines that we used to get each and every weekend on ESPN- but now with obviously much larger and deadly heartbreaking results.
In the face of massive fear and uncertainty, we have turned to all the media channels at once, sharing statistics and stories in a massive and almost unfathomable deluge of information that makes pre-game Super Bowl hype seem like one tiny random tweet.
In fact, I think what has made the outbreak especially difficult to for Americans to follow is that “scoring” this event is difficult — is a million cases and 60,000 deaths a sign of total government failure or a mercifully small number of cases that we should be thankful for? When the epidemic finally winds down- should we be relieved that “only” 2 million people around the world have died? What if eventually 25 million die globally? Clearly catastrophic! But what if without interventions, distancing and incredible global response — it might have been 125 million?
We are actually quite used to these kind of unresolvable counterfactual debates— what if the Patriots hadn’t drafted Tom Brady? Is MJ really the greatest of all-time? Is California’s COVID-19 response a miracle or a disaster? What if New York had shutdown sooner? What if we had drafted Clinton instead of Trump?
In the end, many of these questions will remain debated for months and years, but remain unresolved. However, after stacking up piles of statistics and pouring through thousands of tweets day after day, all I can conclude is that each nation, even each city, seems to have the COVID-19 response it deserves.
Some Statistics
Some of this variation in national response can be captured statistically. This brilliant infographic by the Financial Times depicts each outbreak on a standard time series, while also providing context with the light grey background lines. We can quickly see that there have been widespread differences in terms of the rate of spread and overall impact.
Here we see a different look at the data, but with a crucial adjustment based on the overall population of each country. Given our overall population size, the US might be faring better than others.
Our World in Data has yet another “scoreboard” to view the epidemic. This global snapshot based on number of cases. On their site, you can run the data over time.
Finally, this simple curve provides hope that eventually, we will all make it to the end of the game.
Some Stories
While statistics reveal one view of the epidemic, these brief Twitter stories from around the world help uncover the incredible depth, heartbreak, complexity and local nuances of the situation — as of mid-April 2020.
Simply going from A-Z through a list of countries didn’t really seem to work in telling the story — nor did sorting by population or number of cases. So for now, they are arranged as more of a montage of nations and regions. Hopefully you will find some stories that speak to you as you scroll through!
South Korea
Hong Kong & Singapore
Britain
China
Japan
Sweden
France
Brazil
Faroe Islands
Spain
Germany
Italy
Taiwan
New Zealand
Nigeria
Senegal
UAE
The United States of America
California
New Orleans
New York
Philly
An epic moment…
Not so epic moment…
A Closing Word About Data
This epidemic is not only driving a viral growth in bilateral pneumonia, but also a Twitter storm of conspiracy theories and anti-vaxxer paranoia. So, it’s vitally important to remember that even in a perfect, fully transparent and impartial world — gathering, counting and correctly aligning the statistics on such a massive and widespread outbreak would be difficult.
Meanwhile, back here in the real world, we can only hope that testing, transparency, and global reporting mechanisms are strengthened and better coordinated— not torn down, and that research for effective and proven treatments and vaccines continues at full speed.
