Covid-19 - Globally

 The following statistics are from the Johns Hopkins University site (https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/blob/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_covid19_confirmed_global.csv)

Western and Northern  Europe and the US 10/4/20

Major W European, the US, and Swedish countries	Northern European countries

Observations: 

• in early March and April 2020, Italy followed by Spain and Belgium were the first countries to experience an outbreak 
• The initial peak for all countries with the exception of Sweden had passed by May 2020.
• Secondary peaks were experienced by Sweden in June and the US in July 2020.
• Spain, Belgium, France, and the UK in that order experienced a significant secondary increase in cases starting in July through August 2020.
• Spain appears to have peaked the second time in September 2020. Belgium, France, and the UK continued to climb in October 2020.
• In terms of cumulative deaths/million population, Germany has by far the lowest trajectory. The next lowest country, France, has over 4 times Germany's number of deaths/million population.
• The leader in cumulative deaths/million population is Belgium, followed by the US and the UK running almost dead equal with the US just having overtaken the UK.
• Northern Europe:
  • Iceland was the first country to experience a notable rise in daily cases.
  • By the middle of  April 2020, all countries apart from Sweden had experienced a peak in cases and passed the peak.
  • Sweden continued to experience an increase in daily confirmed cases per million population until the end of May 2020.
  • The different trajectory of Swedish cases presumably reflects the fact that it did not implement a lockdown and "masks were never required and aren't commonly worn".  Sweden "managed to flatten its curve, prompting its health leadership to claim victory -- but others question the cost of the strategy, as the country has a far higher death toll than its Scandinavian neighbors." see https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/87812.
  • The Swedish deaths as seen in the North European deaths chart above are seen to be over five times that of the next N European country, Denmark.
  • It appears significant that though Sweden leads in confirmed deaths/million population in Northern Europe, it is below Spain the second lowest in Western Europe.

Top 9 N hemisphere countries by Covid-19 confirmed cases 9/10/20

We used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_by_country_and_territory to determine the top Northern Hemisphere countries by confirmed cases as of September 11, 2020 to be:

State	ID	Population (K)	Covid-19 confirmed	deaths	% deaths/ confirmed	confirmed/ day/ million population	deaths/ day/ million population	smoothed ( daily Confirmed/ million population)	smoothed( daily Deaths/ million population)	WHO per capita health expenditure1	Income per capita ($)2
Colombia	co	50882.891	694664	22275	3.21	153.548665	4.3629596	149.05375	4.65213909	$374	14503
France	fr	65273.511	392243	30819	7.86	137.130665	0.2144821	118.234354	0.23417944	$4026	44033
India	in	1380004.39	4562414	76271	1.67	69.96427	0.8760842	64.7686345	0.80734733	$63	7166
Iran	ir	83992.949	395488	22798	5.76	24.561586	1.5358432	25.0735333	1.4831177	$366	20885
Mexico	mx	128932.753	652364	69649	10.68	39.113413	4.6535887	39.3006644	3.67855105	$535	18656
Russia	ru	145934.462	1042836	18207	1.75	36.386196	0.8702537	35.1557028	0.71264867	$524	25763
Spain	es	46754.778	554143	29699	5.36	230.22246	1.5185614	200.529543	1.42078679	$2354	39037
United Kingdom	uk	67886.011	360544	41697	11.57	43.175316	0.2062281	37.533506	0.17045381	$4356	44920
United States	us	331002.651	6356715	191213	3.01	102.630598	2.7008847	105.162731	2.11564987	$9536	59928

¹ From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita

² From https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/

Cumulative confirmed cases Click on chart for more details	Cumulative deaths Click on chart for more details

% deaths/confirmed cases Click on chart for more details	Confirmed cases per million population Click on chart for more details	Deaths per million population Click on chart for more details

Smoothed daily confirmed cases Click on chart for more details	Smoothed daily confirmed cases per million population Click on chart for more details	Smoothed daily deaths per million population Click on chart for more details.

Observations:

• The confirmed cases indicate how far ahead the US was ahead in such cases, leading the runner up India by almost 1.8 million cases and over six times the number of cases for the third country Russia.
• In terms of deaths, the US leads second-place Russia by over 2.5 times, with Mexico close behind Russia.
• Looking at deaths/confirmed cases the UK and France took the lead from Spain in early April. The UK, France, and Spain all continue to reduce the deaths/confirmed ratio while other countries are currently holding steady or increasing the cases of Russia ad Iran.
• When one normalizes the confirmed cases by the population then the case count is noticeably increasing for all 9 countries.
• Again the US has a clear lead followed by Columbia and Russia.
• Looking at the deaths/million population, the leaders Spain and the UK have failed to flatten their curve as has the fifth place country France. the other countries all exhibit a noticeable increase. The third and fourth leading countries, the US and Mexico, are rapidly catching up with the leaders Spain and the UK, while Colomb catching up with fifth-placed France.
•  India leads the daily confirmed cases with almost 90,000 cases per day followed by the US with about 35,000. India is still increasing daily while the US is in a downward trend.
• When one normalizes the confirmed cases by population it is apparent the US has seen two distinct peaks and Spain, France and the UK are on their way to a second peak. There also appear to be recent upticks for Russia and Mexico.
• In terms of daily deaths per million population, Iran, Spain, France, the UK, and the US were the early leaders. Today, in decreasing order, Columbia, Mexico the US, and Iran are the leaders.

European Union and the US

Here we compare the United States (US) cases with the top 8 European Union (EU) countries by population. 

Also see:

• https://www.statista.com/chart/22102/daily-covid-19-cases-in-the-us-and-the-eu/
• https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/06/the-us-lags-way-behind-europe-in-covid-19-mortality/
• https://www.healthline.com/health-news/europe-fights-back-against-second-covid-19-wave#Why-are-cases-rising?

In particular, we wished to investigate in more detail the comparison between the US and the EU shown in https://www.statista.com/chart/22102/daily-covid-19-cases-in-the-us-and-the-eu/ and seen below:

Thus we extracted the EU Covid-19 results as of September 4th 2020, for the top 8 EU countries by population and compared them with the US, see below.

	confirmed/million population Click on chart for more information	deaths/million population Click on chart for more information

% Deaths/confirmed Click on chart for more information	Daily confirmed cases per million population Click on chart for more information	Daily deaths per million population Click on chart for more information

Observations:

• The first confirmed case is for the US on 1/22/20 followed by France on 1/24/20, Germany on 1/27/20 and Italy 1/31/20.
• The first death was for Italy on 2/21/20 (at this time 20 confirmed cases had been recorded for Italy) followed by the US on 2/28 (at this time 24 cases had been recorded for the US).
• In confirmed cases per million population, the US leads the European countries by a wide margin. The runner up is Spain followed closely by Belgium.
• It is noticeable that all 8 European Union countries flattened the curve of confirmed cases/million population in early May and held it until July with Romania being the first of the 8 EU to experience a renewed increase. The US has on the other has has yet to substantially flatten its curve.
• Looking at the deaths/million population, Belgium leads followed by Spain and Italy, with the US rapidly catching up with Italy. Poland and Germany have the lowest deaths/million population.
• All countries have passed the peak of deaths/confirmed cases with Italy having recently taken the lead from Belgium and France. The US and Poland have the lowest deaths/confirmed.
• In terms of confirmed cases /day/million population, the US has long held the lead peaking around the end of the 3rd week in July. It was overtaken by Spain which has seen a steep rise in daily confirmed cases starting the 2nd week of July. France has also seen steep rise since the start of August and is now in 3rd place. The other countries appear to have halted the second rise in daily confirmed cases/million population that started early July.
• Looking at the deaths/day/million population all countries had an initial peak between in March or April, the first to peak being Italy and Spain.
• Following the drop after the peaks, the US has held the lead since the end of May.  By early September Romania was catching the US, while the other countries, apart from Spain which may be seeing a resurgence, were recording almost an order of magnitude fewer deaths/day/million population.

Southern Hemisphere countries with big outbreaks 9/2/2020

Here we chose 8 countries completely in the Southern hemisphere that had large pandemic outbreaks and one (New Zealand) that did not.

confirmed cases linear Y-axis Click on chart for more information	confirmed/million population Click on chart for more information	Log10 confirmed/million population Click on chart for more information

deaths linear Y-axis Click on chart for more information	deaths/million population Click on chart for more information	Log10 deaths/million population Click on chart for more information

% Deaths/confirmed Click on chart for more information	Smoothed daily confirmed cases per million population Click on chart for more information	Smoothed daily deaths per million population Click on chart for more information

The smoothing is a seven-day running average.

Observations:

• As would be expected Brazil, with the largest population by far (~ 3.5 times that of the runner up South Africa) had the largest number of confirmed cases.
• Once one normalizes the confirmed cases by the population then Chile takes the lead followed by Peru and then Brazil both of which are catching up with Chile, then a gap before South Africa, Bolivia and Argentina. Ecuador comes next, having considerably flattened its curve compared to the previous nations, and finally Australia and New Zealand.
• On January 26, 2020, Australia was the first of these countries to confirm a case, almost four weeks before the second country (Chile)
• Australia experienced exponential growth in confirmed cases throughout the month of March before dramatically flattening its curve in April.
• Australia then experienced a further rise in confirmed cases starting the second week of June and extending to the third week of August.
• Looking at the deaths, Brazil again has the most, over four and half time more than the runner up Peru.
• Once one normalizes the deaths by population then Peru is the leader followed by Chile with Brazil close behind, then Bolivia, Ecuador, South Africa and Argentina.
• The Log10 charts indicate that New Zealand has managed to successfully flatten both its confirmed cases and deaths, while Australia after flattening the curves has experienced a rise in both metrics starting in July.
• It appears that the ratio of deaths/confirmed with time has peaked and is going down for Ecuador, Brazil and  Argentina. It apears to be rising again for Bolivia, Peru, Chile, South Africa and Australia. New Zealand is holding steady.
• The daily confirmed cases are on the rise for Chile and Argentina, falling for S. Africa, Chile, Australia and possibly Brazil.
• The daily deaths are falling for Brazil, Chile and S. Africa. They appear to be rising for Argentina and Australia. Ecuador and Bolivia appear to be roughly holding steady.
• New Zealand is a special case. Its first confirmed case was reported on February 28. The first death was a month later on March 29th by which time there had been  514 confirmed cases. The last death was May 29th (this was the 22nd cumulative death) by which time the number of confirmed cases totaled  1504.

Northern Hemisphere countries with contrasting strategies 8/31/20

Here we chose 9 countries in the Northern hemisphere with contrasting approaches to how they responded to the pandemic. All except India have high per capita incomes. The countries are:

Also see 

• Covid-19 - Visualizing the data with Motion Charts#19-VisualizingthedatawithMotionCharts-NordicandBalticcountries8/17/20 for more comparisons between Sweden and other North European countries.
• Covid-19 Europe for more detail on European countries.

• and Covid-19 - Globally#Comparing the spread of Covid19 in Canada and the US with larger W European countries

confirmed cases linear Y-axis Click on chart for more information	confirmed/million population Click on chart for more information	Log10 confirmed/million population Click on chart for more information

deaths linear axis Click on chart for more information	deaths/million population Click on chart for more information	Log10 deaths/million population Click on chart for more information

% Deaths/confirmed Click on chart for more information	Daily confirmed per million population Click on chart for more information	Daily deaths per million population Click on chart for more information

Observations:

• In terms of total confirmed cases the US stands out as the leader with almost 6 million cases.  India is next in line with almost 3.7 million cases. 
• If one looks at the fraction of a country's population (in terms of cases/.million population) then again the US leads. The runner up is Sweden with about half the cases, followed by the UK, Canada, then Germany and Denmark running neck and neck,  India, with Japan at 1/5th of india, but increasing, and Taiwan with about 1/25th of Japan's cases/million population. 
• Confirmed cases continue to rise noticeably in all countries except Japan
• The log10 scale plot assists in seeing the differences between Japan and Taiwan.
• The steepest rises in confirmed cases per day per million population are for the US (~125 confirmed cases/day/million population) and India (~50 confirmed cases/day/million population).
• Deaths tell a similar story with the US leading with 183K deaths, followed by India with 65K deaths and the UK with 41.5K deaths.
• Deaths are still climbing in the US (~2.5/day/million population) and India (~0.6/day/million population) while other countries have pretty much stabilized at under 0.25 deaths/day/million population.
• The ratio of deaths/confirmed cases is highest for the UK followed by Canada and Sweden, followed by Germany and Denmark. The ratio is dropping with time.

Top ten countries with Covid-19 cases 8/9/20

Daily confirmed Click on the chart for more information	Daily deaths   Click on the chart for more information

Total deaths/confirmed cases   Click on the chart for more information

Observations among these countries:

• Iran was the first of the big 10 countries to record confirmed cases and deaths. The US followed about 2 weeks later.
• Iran peaked at the end of March. Iran's daily confirmed cases per capita hen dropped until the start of May after which they surged again and have held steady after the second week in June.
• The US daily confirmed cases per capita started to decline after the start of May but then increased again in the 30 days starting in the 3rd week of June.
• Russia's daily confirmed cases per capita caught up with the US at the start of June, then after tracking the US until around June 16th and then continued its downward slope while the US increased.
• Chile has the largest number of daily reported confirmed cases per capita from the 4th week of May to the 4th week of June.
• India's daily confirmed cases per capita and. deaths per capita have not peaked yet.
• Looking at the ratio of daily deaths/confirmed cases:
  • Mexico has more than a factor 2 (nb. the y scale is log base 10) daily deaths/confirmed cases than any other country.
  • Russia and S. Africa have the lowest daily deaths/confirmed cases since the end of June.
  • Brazil, the US and India have reduced their ratio over the last two and a half months while Chlle's and Russia's has increased

Countries with the leading numbers of cases 7/28/2020

As of 7/28/2020, the US leads in confirmed cases :

The US also leads in the number of deaths:

If one normalizes by dividing by the population then the United States drops to eighth in the world in reported confirmed cases per population:

and drops to 9th in deaths per population.

In terms of deaths/confirmed the Unites States drops to 55th highest among 179 countries.

Daily cases 7/31/2020

Looking in more details the leading countries by confirmed cases per day per 1000 population on July 31st were:

And by deaths:

Comparing the spread of Covid19 in Canada and the US with larger W European countries

Confirmed Cases

It is seen that Italy was the first country whose Covid-19 confirmed cases spike. This was followed by Spain then Germany and France.  Germany was particularly successful in suppressing its peak. The UK has a long tail and the virus has just run away in the US which now has about 10 times more confirmed cases as the other countries with the exception of Spain. Recently Spain has seen an uptick in cases

Deaths

It is seen that US deaths / day / capita are over three times that of the nearest competitor (UK) and over 10 times greater than the next competitor (France)

Possible correlation of Covid-19 cases per capita versus median population age for world's countries

The median population age varies by country from about 15 to 50. The 15 countries with the lowest median population age are all in Africa.

Since Covid-19 death rates appear to be higher for older people (see for example https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/COVID-19-Cases-by-Age-Group.aspx for California), we looked at the Covid-19 deaths per capita  for 179 countries versus a country's population median age. However, there appears to be very little correlation.