Covid-19 in countries with most cases

Here we focus on the countries with the leading numbers of cases. As of 11/8/2020, these are in alphabetical order: Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Djibouti, France, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the US. The COVID-19 case information is from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) (see https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19). To look at the data in the charts below in more detail, go to the library of Excel charts at https://www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/excel and click on the relevant file. For more information on looking at the Excel data see Covid-19 - Visualizing the data with Excel.

Daily cases by population density

In trying to understand why Belgium's caseload is so high "Belgian officials have sought to tamp down concern by suggesting their chart-topping numbers are products of their accounting methods and commitment to capturing an accurate picture of their outbreak." Washington Post May 17, 2020, also see Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Belgium. Here, we look for another possible cause.

A contributing factor may be related to population density, since the more people packed into an area, the harder it is to social distance.  Below we see deaths and cumulative confirmed cases and deaths per million population. 

Daily confirmed cases and deaths by population

7 day smoothed daily confirmed cases per million population	7 day smoothed daily deaths per million population

Cumulative confirmed cases and deaths by population 

Cumulative Confirmed cases per million population daily smoothed over 7 days	Cumulative deaths per million population daily smoothed over 7 days

Daily and cumulative confirmed cases and deaths by population density

As seen below plotting the cases versus population density shows very different relative trajectories with the US and Russia leading in cases, followed by Brazil.

Cumulative cases by population density